And the old couple went up to their room, laughing and cackling as they passed Nell’s door.
And as they did so the clock struck nine.
She heard it as she stood in her bedroom, with her hands clasped in front of her, dazed and bewildered. The world seemed to have closed on her with her parents’ good-night kisses—all the people in it appeared to have become indistinct and blurred. They were fading away before her mental vision one by one—the Earl and his Countess, Jack Portland, Hugh Owen, her father and mother, Hetty, everyone. Nell felt she had done with them all for ever. At one moment she thought of writing to Hugh Owen. He had loved her and had great hopes of her, and she had dashed them all aside. She was sorry for his disappointment and his broken faith. Should she write and tell him so. But what could she say, except that the man he saw her with was her former lover, and if he discovered him to be the earl, there would be another unpleasantness for Ilfracombe. Oh, no! Her life had been all a muddle and a mistake, it was best to leave it so. She could not unravel it, and the more she touched it the more entangled it became. Best to remain silent to the last. Not a thought of Portland entered her head. She had made a certain compact with him, and she had meant to end it like this all along. But she moved across the room with a soft lingering step, and eyes that seemed already covered with the film of death, and gazed from the window that looked towards the house where Ilfracombe was sleeping.
‘Good-bye,’ she murmured indistinctly, ‘good-bye.’
And then Nell turned away, and taking hold of a chair, dragged it to the wardrobe, and mounting on it took down the bottle of poison for which her mother had told her to write a label.
END.
EDINBURGH
COLSTON AND COMPANY
PRINTERS.
LIST OF PUBLICATIONS.
14 Bedford Street,
Strand,
London, W.C.
F. V. White & Co.’s
LIST OF
PUBLICATIONS