From the same depository she took a gray beaver cloth coat, a gray felt hat, gray barege vail and a pair of gray gloves. These she laid out upon the bed.
Next she took from her casket the few jewels given her by her foster-father, and the few hundred dollars she had saved from the liberal allowance Major Hereward had made her during his life. All these, together with her comb and brushes, a few pocket-handkerchiefs, and a single change of underclothing, she packed into a hand-bag.
When her small preparations were all complete, it seemed to require a painful wrench to tear herself away.
Her husband had outraged and repudiated her indeed; yet she felt that she could not leave the house without writing to him a few words of farewell. She meant to write only a very few words, not half a dozen lines in all, only enough to remind him that she went not of her own will, but by his will.
Yet, when she sat down at the table and commenced her letter, a flood of thought and feeling bore her impetuously onward to a fuller utterance, and she poured forth her soul in that touching, pathetic, yet dignified letter that he afterwards found upon her dressing-table, and which, after perusal, and with reckless anger, he committed to the flames.
When she had finished her task, sealed her letter, and pinned it to the pin-cushion where he could not fail to find it, she put on her gray beaver coat, hat, vail and gloves, took up her hand-bag and left the room.
She paused for a moment in the upper hall, and looked over the balusters to see if any one were in sight or hearing below.
But there was no one. The coast was clear. There was no danger of interruption.
So Lilith went softly down the stairs, opened the hall door and passed out into the night.
The sky was clear and the stars were shining brightly down on the snow-covered earth.