[CHAPTER XXIII.]
As Hyacinth Vaughan left the Loadstone Assize Court she drew her veil tightly over her face, and, looking neither to the right nor left, made her way through the dense crowd of people. No one noticed her; they were all too busily engaged in discussing the events of the trial. She had not the least idea whither she was going, or what she was about to do; all she remembered was that she had broken every tie that bound her to her past life, that it was all dead to her, and that she had saved Claude. How vividly, as she walked through the long street, there came back to her a remembrance of one day when she had driven over with Sir Arthur and Lady Vaughan to Loadstone. What a deep gulf lay between that time and this! Then people had bowed to her as though she had been some great lady, and honor and respect had been shown to her. Now, homeless, friendless, she was a fugitive in that same town, and knew not where to lay her head.
She walked until her limbs ached, and then she stopped suddenly, for the first time asking herself where she was going—what she was to do. "For I am dead," she said to herself, with a low moan, "to all who know me—dead to my beautiful past. There is no Hyacinth Vaughan. And what is to become of the wretched girl who once bore the name? I do not know."
She must go somewhere—she could not pace the long street and the silent road all night; she must rest or she should fall, a helpless inert mass, on the ground. Suddenly she came to the railway station; a porter was shouting—"Train for London! Passengers for London, take your seats!"
She could not account for the impulse which led her to purchase a ticket and take her place in a second-class carriage for London. She had no idea what she should do when she reached her destination.
It was a rest to sit alone in the carriage—a luxury to close the tired eyes, and say to herself that she had no more to do, for Claude was saved; yet, when her eyes were closed, so many strange scenes flashed before them, that she opened them with a terrified cry. It seemed to her that she was too tired even to rest, and that the aching pains in her limbs grew worse, her eyes burned, and her head throbbed with pain.
Yet through it all—through fatigue and pain—there was the great relief that Claude was saved. Of Adrian she dared not think. She knew that this "fiery sorrow" was waiting for her when she should regain strength and calmness, when she could look it in the face; as it was, she shrunk, sick and shuddering, from it. She put it from her. She would have none of it. If she had then remembered all about Adrian Darcy, she would have gone mad and nothing would have saved her.
The train sped on. When she dared not keep her eyes closed any longer, she watched the fields and trees as the train whirled by. It was strange how mingled were her thoughts; at one time she was at Queen's Chase, sitting with Lady Vaughan in the silent rooms; at another she was with Claude in the faint rosy morning dawn, and the murdered woman was lying under the hedge; then she was with Adrian by the waterfall, and he was telling her, that he should love her for evermore; then she stood beside a green grave in a country churchyard, over which the foliage of a large tree drooped—beneath was a stone with the inscription, "Hyacinth Vaughan—aged eighteen."