CHAPTER XXIV.
DESPAIR.
"What have I done? what have I done? Am I mad?" asked the wretched woman of herself, as she rocked herself to and fro uneasily, sitting in an arm-chair by the fire. The weather was warm but Catherine King had lit the fire; she felt chilly and ill, and could not bear to be left alone in that still room without some moving thing by her, were it only the leaping flames.
It was early in the evening of the day after her interview with Mary Grimm. She sat in the little parlour of her house in Maida Vale gazing at the red embers, waiting for the arrival of the two leading Sisters of the Inner Circle. They were coming to learn from her own lips the result of her visit to Farnham, to prepare for the execution of the traitor.
How could she meet them, how to tell them what she had done? She could not herself distinctly call to mind how it had all happened. She had gone down to the country with a firm resolve, and had been driven by she knew not what to act in direct opposition to that resolve and strong desire. She had done what she now cursed herself for doing.
"Yes, I am mad—I must be mad to have done this thing!" she muttered to herself with impatient fury. "With my own hands I have ruined the Cause. It is all over. I am mad."
As the time of the appointment drew near, the repugnance she felt to entering into a personal explanation with the Sisters intensified. No! she dare not meet them—she would write to them; so she put on her bonnet and cloak, and was just about to leave the house when a ring came at the street bell, and the maid-servant announced Sisters Susan and Eliza.
"Good-evening, Sisters," said the Chief, "I did not expect you so soon; you are before your time."