I was running away from Explanations.

I wrote a little note and pushed it under Cheneston's door, where he would find it in the morning.

"Please send the five hundred pounds to mother.—P.B."

I packed a few of my serviceable clothes in a handbag.

I had five pounds in notes and fifteen shillings in silver.

The dawn was just breaking when I left the Court.

The world was wet and cold.

I looked back at the house from the other side of the wrought-iron gate; its shuttered windows seemed like hostile eyes.

I felt a little like Eve expelled from the Garden of Eden—I wondered if her expulsion had taken place on a wet morning before the sun was up.

XIV