"Yes. Get me a carriage, and accompany me out of the village. I need protection from insult."
"You shall not be insulted. I promise it. How long will you be getting ready?"
"I shall be ready in less than an hour."
Her preparations for departure helped to divert her mind from the grief which oppressed it. Into one trunk she packed what belonged to her. She would have liked to take the desk, inlaid with silver, of Indian manufacture, which she had regarded as her own, but it had been removed with other articles which she believed were hers. She made no complaint; even to herself she did not repine; she submitted to everything, her only wish being to find herself in a place where she was unknown. All was ready when Leonard came to tell her that the carriage was waiting.
"Where do you wish to go?" he asked.
"It does not matter," she replied, "so long as I am among strangers."
He named a town at a distance of eighteen or twenty miles, and she said it would do as well as any other. Soon they were at the door of the inn, about which were assembled the usual idlers. The carriage which Leonard had procured was a closed one, and he assisted Emilia into it, saying that he would sit by the driver. She appreciated the act, and believed it proceeded from thoughtfulness; it was her desire to be alone with her thoughts.
The driver was a long time starting; he fidgeted with his horses, with his reins, with the harness, and then he fortified himself with half a bottle of red wine. No one approached Emilia while he was thus employed; no one breathed "farewell," or gave her a kind look. But when at length the driver took his seat on the box, with Leonard beside him, and was gathering up his ragged reins, the landlord's daughter passed the open window of the carriage, and furtively threw something in. It fell into Emilia's lap, and she, with eyes suddenly overflowing, and lips convulsed with emotion, covered it with her handkerchief, lest it should be taken from her. Then with a shout, the driver set his horses in motion, and they commenced their journey.
Emilia lifted her handkerchief. In her lap lay a little bunch of flowers, tied together with string, attached to which was a piece of paper, and written upon the paper the words, "From his grave." She pressed the flowers to her breast, to her lips, and murmured a prayer of thankfulness. The sense of the deep and irreparable wrong which Gerald had inflicted upon her passed away, and she thought of him only as one to whom she had given her heart and the full measure of her love. He was her child's father; better to think of him with love and kindness, which would soften her heart, than with harshness and bitterness, which would harden it. It would help to smooth the roads of the future she was to pass in the loving companionship of her child. "Only you and I alone, darling," she murmured; "only you and I!"
How kind of the young girl to send her away with this token of pity and sympathy. "Heaven bless her for it!" thought Emilia. "Heaven brighten her life, and save her from misery!" Had Emilia possessed a nature which would have hardened under such sufferings as she was enduring, the young girl's simple offering would have humanized and softened it. No wonder, then, that with a nature as sweet as ever woman was blessed with, she looked upon the flowers from Gerald's grave as an angel's gift, sent to her as a divine solace and strengthener. "I will be strong," she thought. "A duty of love is mine to perform, and I will perform it in humbleness and gratitude."