Now she knew the very worst. Now she could not doubt that her husband had deserted her and that he meditated the crime of marriage with his cousin Anna.
Yes, the crime!
For, notwithstanding all that Richard Hammond had said and thought to the contrary, she knew that she herself not only ought to have been, in right—but really was, in fact—the true wife of Alexander Lyon; and that it was but a slight legal informality, unsuspected by her and even by him at the time of their marriage, of which he was now about to avail himself in breaking the sacred bonds that bound him to his young wife, in order to unite himself to his wealthy cousin. She knew that this intended act would be a sin, and she feared that it might be construed into a felony. There was an ugly word in the dictionary called “bigamy,” and its penalty was uglier still—the state’s prison. To save Alexander in his moral insanity, from such guilt and such degradation, she resolved to go to Old Lyon Hall and stop the intended marriage, even though the adventure should cost her her life.
“And the wedding is to be celebrated on the evening of the fifteenth, and this is the morning of the fourteenth, and I have but little more than twenty-four hours to do all that must be done to save him!” she said, speaking her mind aloud, to the infinite surprise and alarm of Leo, who was still standing before her and who now looked as if he thought his mistress had gone crazy,—and “well she might,” he said to himself, as he gazed on her where she sat with her hands clasped to her temples.
Drusilla reflected intently for a few moments. There were several ways of reaching Old Lyon Hall,—one was to go by steamer down the Potomac to Chesapeake Bay and up James River to the Stormy Petrel landing, and then by turnpike to the Porcupine Mountain; another was to take the railway train from Alexandria to Richmond, and then the stage-coach across the country. Both these routes were favored by the Lyon family when they had leisure and were travelling for recreation. But both required two days of travel.
Drusilla saw that she must take the third, which was the shortest if the roughest route—the old line of stagecoaches running between Washington city and Western Virginia. It is true this road was very dangerous, especially at night. It crossed the Blue Ridge, the Shenandoah, and the Alleghany mountains. It wound around terrible heights where there were many hundred feet of perpendicular rock above and below, with little width of way between. Once in a while you heard of a coach being crushed by the fall of the rocks from above, or dashed to pieces by going over the side of the precipice. Upon the whole this was not a favored route with travellers who could avoid it. But Drusilla resolved to take it because it was the shortest to her place of destination, and in less than twenty-four hours it would take her to a little mountain hamlet within ten miles of Old Lyon Hall. True, she might meet with an accident on the road, but if she should lose her life she might serve Alick by that means as well or better than by preventing his marriage with Anna, since if she (Drusilla) were dead, that marriage would be no longer criminal.
“Leo,” she inquired, looking up at the anxious boy, “what is the hour?”
Leo glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantle-piece, and answered:
“It is nearly one, ma’am.”
“Do you know what time the night coach for Western Virginia leaves Washington?”