[CHAPTER XXX.]
Esmeralda stood where he had left her as one stands after receiving a mortal blow, in a dull stupor too profound for pain. She sunk into a chair, and with her eyes fixed on the dark sky, gradually realized what this was that had happened to her. Her husband believed her to be guilty of betraying him. They had agreed to part. She should never see him again.
Presently the details of his proposal came back to her; she was to go on living at Belfayre, and before the world as his wife. How little he knew her! A smile that was far more bitter than tears crossed her face. She got up and paced the room, sometimes with her hands hanging limply and wearily at her side, at others clasping her burning brow. She was trying to think what she should do.
Suddenly, in a flash, it came to her. With a change of manner that indicated a new-born resolution, she took off her dress, and put on the quietest of her traveling costumes. Then she went to the velvet-covered safe and took out her jewel-box. Slowly and carefully she selected the various articles which she had purchased before her marriage, and put these into a case by themselves. In the drawer of the safe were some bank-notes and some gold; she placed these with the jewel-case in her traveling-bag, and locked it.
As she did so, the light fell upon the wedding-ring upon her hand. She held up her hand and looked at it. Then, with tightly set lips, she drew the ring from her finger, and going to the writing-table, placed the ring in an envelope, and addressed it to “The Marquis of Trafford.” This she placed in the center of her dressing-table. Then she put on her hat and traveling-cloak and stood looking round the room with a strange expression on her face, as of one who is taking leave forever of all that she once held dear.
She opened the door and listened. The great house was very quiet; there was no sound but the ticking of the tall clock that stood in the hall and the heavy breathing of the great hound which lay on the rug before the fire-place.
She went out on to the corridor, not stealthily, though her footfall made no sound on the thick piled carpet. She wished to leave Belfayre unseen and unheard; but, though every man and woman had stood in her way and tried to bar her progress, she would have walked through them; no one should stop her.
From that moment, from the moment she had taken the wedding-ring from her finger, she had, in her mind, ceased to be Trafford’s wife; she was no longer the Marchioness of Trafford, but Esmeralda Howard.