They carried the rector into his home, and he was put to bed by the physicians. Mary, feeling that she was banned and shunned, shut herself up in her room, a prey to a hundred different emotions. Terror was the dominant one. Those dreadful, rough-spoken men, who had come to arrest Dick, would soon be arriving to take her away.
She commenced to pack a trunk. Flight was the only thing possible under the circumstances.
CHAPTER XXX
FLIGHT
Everybody supposed Mrs. Swinton to be locked in her room. The rector was attended by his daughter and the physicians, and lay in a state of collapse for many hours, causing considerable anxiety to the household; but, toward midnight, he rallied and asked for his wife.
Visitors were forbidden. The presence of Mrs. Swinton was not likely to have a soothing effect, and all emotion must be avoided. Nevertheless, under the peculiar circumstances, the physicians decided that she should be told of his asking for her, although she was not to be allowed to enter the sickroom.
Netty, in tears, crept upstairs to her mother’s room, and knocked softly. There was no answer. Examination showed that the place was empty. The erring wife had fled, and no one knew whither—except Dick.
The young man’s position was extremely painful. Unable to do anything, with scarcely strength enough to rise from his couch, he lay in torment. His mother had rushed into his room in a highly 334 hysterical state, and announced her intention of fleeing before the consequences of her husband’s public confession could culminate in arrest. In vain, the young man implored her to remain and face it out, and comfort the rector. It was impossible to reason with her, her terror and humiliation were too great. She could not, she declared, live another day in this atmosphere. He pointed out that, since the miser had acknowledged the checks, a prosecution was out of the question, and that she was as safe at home as a thousand miles away. It was, however, useless and painful to argue with her. Her double crime had been laid bare, and shame—all the more acute because it humbled a woman who had borne herself proudly all her life—as much as fright prompted her flight. Moreover, she believed that Ormsby might act upon the rector’s confession, despite Herresford’s dying acknowledgment.