Echo felt a little shiver in her heart, as painful contrasting pictures thronged before her disordered fancy—pictures of herself as Craig's wife. She saw herself, young in years but with sere joys and blasted ideals, all youth's impulses dead in her, the wife of a man whose bodily presence she loathed and whose character, even before this, she had detested. A chill passed through her, and she dropped the curtain and shut out the moonlight. But what if her father stood ruined, the mark of public pity and covert sneers? She thought of the pearl-handled revolver. He would have given his life to checkmate fate, if that had but been possible to him. And she was his daughter!
But to give herself, her body, her soul! To go to this man, to live with him, to bear his name—she shrank from the thought as at the touch of white-hot iron.
When the tiny ormolu clock on her dressing-table struck five she drew up the blind. Dawn, with its coral sandals, was tiptoeing over the garden, hanging dew-diamonds on the rose-bushes, swinging her censer of multifold perfume to the waking flute of the birds. She bathed her face and smoothed her hair, then put on a dark travelling dress and packed a small bag, putting into it only linen and a few toilet-accessories, with a closed silver frame, heart-shaped, whose twin sides held miniatures of her father and mother. Last she unlocked a tin box in her drawer, took some money which it contained and put it in her pocket. Then, bag in hand, she went downstairs.
In the dining-room Nelson held up his hands, pink-lined palms outward.
"Mah Goodness, honey!" he ejaculated. "Reck'n yo' didn' sleep 'tall las' night, what wid Marse Beve'ly took so yistidy. Yo' look jes' lak er ghos'. Now yo' set down en drink some hot coffee en eat plenty chick'n en waffles. Ain' gwine find nuthin' half ez good on dat ar' dinin'-cyah, nohow!"
The warmth of the coffee was grateful to her, and while the old man hovered about her she made a pretence of eating, answering his protestations with monosyllables, in fact scarcely knowing what she said, for her mind was busy with other things. 'Lige, the driver, would wait to put her on the train—she must take the up-train then, as he expected her to do. And it was an express: she could not leave it till it reached the junction, hours later. There, however, she could take the other road—the Southern. There must be an afternoon train, and that, though by a round-about way, would bring her finally to her destination.
When carriage-wheels sounded from the drive she went into the library and seated at her father's desk, wrote a note. It was to Harry Sevier. She sealed and addressed it with a hand that shook a little, and gave it to Nelson with instructions to send it during the morning. The old negro put her into the carriage, with her bag and tucked the cover about her with loving hands.
She caught a breath, uneven like a child's. "You'll—take good care of father, Nelson?"
"Bress yo' li'l ha'at, ah'm sho' gwine watch Marse Beve'ly lak er hawk. He'll be all right, en yo' be back termorrer."
"Yes," she said faintly.