"Good-night, Hyacinth," Lady Vaughan said, when, half an hour afterward, the girl went to her with a white face and cold rigid lips; "good-night. I hope to see you something like yourself to-morrow—you do not seem well."
And for the last time, Hyacinth Vaughan kissed the fair, stately old face. "To-morrow—ah, where would she be to-morrow?"
"You have been very kind to me," she murmured, "and I am not ungrateful."
Afterward Lady Vaughan understood why the girl lingered near her, why she kissed the withered, wrinkled hands with such passionate tenderness, why her lips opened as if she would fain speak, and then closed mutely. She thought of Hyacinth's strange manner for several minutes after the young girl had quitted the room.
"That terrible news shocked her. She is very sensitive and very tender-hearted—the Vaughans are all the same. I am heartily glad she is to marry Adrian: he is gentle enough to understand and firm enough to manage her. I shall have no more anxiety about the child."
Hyacinth had looked her last on them, and had spoken to them for the last time. She stood in her room now waiting until there should be a chance of leaving the hotel unnoticed, then it suddenly struck her how great would be the consternation on the morrow, when she was missed. What would Adrian do or say—he who loved her so dearly? She went to her little desk and wrote a note to him. She addressed it and left it on the toilet table of her room.
Then she went quietly down-stairs. No one was about. She opened the great hall-door and went out. Some few people still lingered in the grounds; she was not noticed. She walked down the long carriage-drive, and then stood in the street of the little town, alone. She found her way to the station. A great, despairing cry was rising from her heart to her lips, but she stifled it, a faint strange sensation, as though life were leaving her, came over her. She nerved herself.
"I must live until he is free," she said with stern determination—"then death will be welcome!"
They were no idle words that she spoke; all that life held brightest, dearest, and best, was past for her. Her only hope was that she might reach Loadstone in time to save Claude. She knew how soon she would be missed, and how easily she might be tracked. Suppose that they sent or went to her room and found it empty, and then made inquiries and learned that she had taken a ticket for Ostend? They could not overtake the train, but they could telegraph to Ostend and stop her. In that case she would be too late to save Claude. The station was full of people. She saw a lad among them—he seemed to be about fifteen—and she went up to him.