Cora heard her voice as she went by. It was almost like a sigh, but the words were articulate, and they were:
“God forgive me! It is too bad.”
What to do?
Cora stood motionless, her pulses beating furiously, and the blood surging to her brain, and seeming to keep her from thinking out some plan.
Major Rockley—the cruel, insolent libertine—had a post-chaise waiting; by a trick Claire was to be got out, and down the broad walk, led like a sheep to the slaughter by her weak, half-tipsy brother, and then carried off. The plan seemed to Cora devilish in its cunning, and the flush of her ardent blood intoxicated her with a strange feeling of excitement—a wild kind of joy.
It was all for her. Claire away—carried off, or eloped with Rockley, Richard Linnell would rage for a week, and then forget her. Poor fellow! How he had struggled to hide that limp, and how handsome he looked. How she loved him—her idol—who had saved her life. He would be hers now, hers alone, and there would be no handsome, sweet-voiced rival in the way to win him to think always of her soft, grey, loving eyes—so gentle, so appealing in their gaze, that they seemed to be looking out of the darkness at her now.
Yes, there they were so firm and true—so softly appealing, and yet so full of womanly dignity that, as she hated her, so at the same time she loved.
“And in perhaps half an hour she would be away—on the road to London—in the Major’s arms.”
“And Richard Linnell will be free to love me, and me alone?”
She said it aloud, and then tore at her throat, for a thought came that made the blood surge up and nearly suffocate her.