"Here is the coat and hat as you cast them off yesterday. I am glad of this. The fresh air may put merciful thoughts in your heart. Which way will you ride? We will not give up the hope that some good angel will urge you back with a merciful resolve." The lady spoke rapidly and with tears swelling into her eyes.
"I shall ride to Providence, nor return under some days. Farewell! God be with you, and forgive her."
Sir William went away in haste, without other farewell.
It was a full hour before Lady Phipps left the library.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
THE FOREIGN PACKAGE.
After Sir William's departure a package was brought to his house bearing a foreign postmark, and sealed with unusual formality. It was for Barbara Stafford, directed to the care of Sir William Phipps, and had doubtless come over in the ship which Norman had seen the day before buffeting its course shoreward through the storm.
When this package was brought to Lady Phipps she held it irresolute for some minutes. An idea flashed across her mind that it contained some hint of that unhappy woman's life, and a wild impulse rose in her heart to read it. But such thoughts could find no resting-place in her pure nature. She called to Norman Lovel, gave him the package, and bade him take it at once to the prison.
Norman placed the package in his bosom, drew his cloak over it, and went forth one of the heaviest-hearted men ever called upon to undertake a cruel labor of love. He had stayed away from the prison purposely, hoping that the governor might yet return; but when the night stole on with such ruthless certainty, he was preparing to visit the prisoner with the heart-rending assurance that Sir William Phipps had uttered his irrevocable decree. There was no hope for her. On the morrow she must die. Filled with such trouble as youth seldom knows, he took the package in silence, and went his way.