Yet now that the fugitive from justice (or from injustice) was fully vindicated—now that the secret might be told, the mystery cleared up—she must seek to communicate with the wanderer, and immediately.
Two courses were very urgent—the first to get that published confession into the hands of the wanderer; the second to get an interview with her husband. Yet, no! She dared not seek the latter. If it had only been the fatal secret which had parted them, then, indeed, she might have written to him or sought his presence, and said:
“The mystery that raised a cloud between us has been cleared away, and I shall be justified in your sight.”
But it was not only the secret which had divided them.
It was his antipathy to her—his incurable antipathy—expressed in his words—bitter, burning words—that had branded themselves upon her soul:
“I never loved you. I married you only to please my dying father.... In a few hours I shall leave this house, never to return while you desecrate it with your presence.”
No! In the face of such a sentence she could not seek to see Tudor Hereward. All womanly delicacy forbade the step.
But she must bring this published, vindicatory confession to the attention of the exile, who had for more than eighteen years lived under a false charge and false conviction, an outcast from society, a wanderer over the face of the earth.
Lilith roused from her trance and acted promptly.
She cut the slip containing the confession from the paper, and then sat down at the little side table on which her traveling portfolio lay, and wrote this personal for the Pursuivant: