“Mr. Harper, this is sudden—will look strange. You ought to have told me before.”
“I did not know it myself until last night. That my going to Cornwall is necessary, on business grounds, I have already made clear to Marmaduke. He will tell his wife, and Harriet will tell all the world. I have so arranged that you will have no difficulty of any kind. This house will go on as usual, or you can visit at Thornhurst and at my father's. There will be no loss to you of anything or anybody—except one, whose absence must be welcome.” “Welcome!” she repeated in an accent of bitter scorn.
“You said so yourself. Hush! do not say it again. When we part, let it be in peace!”
He spoke in a smothered, exhausted voice, and holding the gate open for her to pass, leaned upon it as if he could hardly stand. But Agatha perceived nothing—she was dizzy and blind.
“Peace?” she repeated, driven mad by the mockery of the word. She saw the door half-open, the warm light glimmering within the hall—so soft—so home-like. The torture was too strong—her senses began to give way.
Without knowing what she did, without any settled purpose except to escape from the misery of that sight, Agatha pushed her husband from her, turned and fled—fled anywhere, no matter where, so that it was into night and darkness, away from her home and from him.
She did not know the way; she only knew that she ran up one street and down another like the wind. Her state of mind was bordering on insanity. At length she paused from sheer exhaustion, and leaned against a doorway—like any poor outraged homeless wretch.
The good man of the house came softly out to look up into the quiet night before he bolted his door. He stood musing, contemplating the stars. It was a minute or more before he noticed the bowed human form beside him. When he did, there was no mistaking the compassionate voice.
“Eh, poor soul! What's wrong wi'ee?”
Agatha sprang up with a cry. There were two standing by her, from whose presence she would gladly have run to the world's end—Mr. Dugdale and her husband. The one remained petrified with astonishment—the other said but three words, in a dull mechanical voice, as if every feeling had been struck out of the man by some thunderbolt of doom.