"I have not slept," returned Hyacinth.
But the few words put her on her guard. She bathed her face, rearranged her hair, and changed her dress, though the weight of misery lay like a weight of lead upon her. Then Lady Vaughan, thinking that she was tired from the emotion and shock of the previous evening, sent word that Miss Vaughan had better remain in her own room for a few hours. The hapless girl was thankful for the respite.
She looked so terribly ill, so ghastly pale, that, when Pincott brought her breakfast, she started in alarm.
"There is nothing the matter," said Hyacinth, "but that I did not sleep well." Pincott went away only half satisfied.
Hyacinth managed to obtain a railway guide. A train would leave Bergheim at ten that night, and reach Ostend on the following morning before the boat started. She would have time to secure a passage and cross. She could take the mail train for Dover, and reach Loadstone so as to be in time for the trial.
At ten that night she must go. She had run away from home once before. Then she had been blinded, tempted and persuaded—then she had believed herself going straight into the fairyland of love and happiness; but now it was all changed. She was running away once more; but this time she was leaving all the hope, all the happiness of her life behind her.
It was well for her that the dull stupor of exhaustion fell over her, or the pain she was suffering must have killed her. She did not know how the time passed. It was like one long, cruel dream of anguish, until the summons came for luncheon. Then she went down stairs. Adrian was not there—that was some consolation. She looked quickly around the room.
"How could I look on his face and live, knowing that I shall see it no more?" she said to herself.
It was like a horrible travesty—the movements of the servants, the changing of the dishes, Lady Vaughan's anxiety about the cold chicken, Sir Arthur's complaint about the wine, while her heart was breaking, and Claude lay in the prison from which she must free him.