Chapter Thirty Eight.
“Yes; what is it?”
Kate Wilton raised her head from where it rested against the bed as she crouched upon the floor, and gazed round wonderingly, conscious that someone had called her by name, but with everything else a blank.
There was a tapping at the door.
“Yes, yes,” said Kate; and she hurried across the room.
“If you please, ma’am, breakfast is waiting, and master’s compliments, and will you come down?”
“Yes; I’ll be down directly,” she cried; and then she pressed her hands to her head and tried to think, but for some moments all was strange and confused, and she wondered why she should have been sleeping there upon the floor, dressed as she was on the previous night, the flowers she had worn still at her breast.
The flowers crushed and bruised!
They acted as the key to the closed mental door, which sprang open, and in one flash of the light which flooded her brain she saw all that had passed before she fled there, and then knelt by the bedside, praying for help, and striving to evolve some means of escape, till, utterly exhausted, nature would bear no more, and she fell asleep, to be awakened by the coming of the housekeeper.
And she had told her that she would be down directly. What should she do?