“She was gone, sir.”
Max Bray stood for a minute as if stunned, and then leaping at the woman he shook her savagely, before he started off to make inquiries.
“Had anyone seen her?”
“No, not a soul.” But her clothes that she had worn the day she was borne insensible to the hotel were gone, as was also her little leather reticule-bag.
“Where could she have gone?”
Only one place could strike Max Bray, as he thought of what she would do if sense had returned, and she had mastered her weakness sufficiently to enable her to steal from the house unobserved. There was only one place that she could seek with the intention of fleeing from him, and that was the railway station.
“Was their life to be bound up somehow with railways?” he asked himself as he started off in the direction of the station. “Bai Jove!” he seemed to have been always either meeting or inquiring about her at booking-offices; but why had she not been better watched?
Why indeed, unless it was that a chance might be given her for seeking freedom. But the landlady’s few minutes had been a full hour, and, as if in her sleep, Ella had slowly risen, dressed for a journey, taken her reticule in her hand, her shawl over her arm, and then, drawing down her veil, walked—unseen, unchallenged—from the house, and, as if guided by instinct, gone straight to the station.
A train was nearly due—a fast train—and still in the same quiet way she applied for a through ticket to London, took her change and walked out on to the platform, to stand there perfectly motionless and fixed of eye.
No one heeded her of the few who were waiting, no one spoke; and at last came the faint and distant sound of the panting train, nearer, nearer, nearer.