Then her mind wandered to the story of a German monarch who caused the executioner to blow his death-blast before the door of his brother's palace. "Ah, you tremble," said the king, "when the prospect of temporal death is so near; but look a little farther and behold the eternal pangs of the soul! How now? Does the sight appall thee? Go to thy home, my brother, the king desires not thy life; but remember the errors of a temporal death and shun the horrors of the second!"
"If I had done this! O, Lillian, Lillian my child! You cannot see your mother at this hour, and it is well! The first—yes the second death is for such as I!"
"I shall do no such thing!" she exclaimed aloud at last as she reseated herself by the window. "The horse perish with its rider! I want neither; I swear it! This hateful business stops here! O wretched, wretched woman that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Was not that in the Bible? Ah, I remember! The voice that has been silent for many years once repeated those words in my hearing when his hour had come. The Bible! I will go to Philadelphia. Mrs. Cheevers will not turn me from her door for—for—she is a Christian! Pride? Away with it! O the curse of a false ambition!"
The shadows of twilight fell noiselessly about her, spreading over the bent figure a pall of tender sympathy. Then she arose, lighted the gas and hurriedly threw into her trunks the plain, rich wardrobe of the elegant "English lady," and locking them prepared to go out. She had remembered that the northern train left the depot at eight, and she was going upon it! She passed out without interruption, and in a half hour the drayman was standing in the hall ready to be shown where the trunks were waiting. "This way," called Mrs. Southey; "you will need help for they are large."
"Where are you going?" asked the lady of the house with great astonishment, opening the parlor door. "Surely you are not going to tear yourself away so abruptly? How lonely I shall be without my aristocratic English guest! But do tell me, where are you going?"
"Out of death unto life," was the quick reply. "This way! Do not mar the railing;" and the two men passed on with the last trunk. "Forty minutes before train time, I believe?" she interrogated as she stepped forward to close the door. "Yes, madam;" and she turned to the bewildered woman who was silently gazing at her.
"Well, I am going," she said calmly; "it matters not to you where, but remember this! If there is a path for such as I back to womanhood I am determined to find it!" A cynical laugh was her only response. "Nevertheless, it is true! The miseries of the last few days have completed the grave into which I have cast my pride and ambitions; would that the bitter memories of the past could be buried with them! But I must go. Farewell—do not wait to attempt your own rescue until the quicksands have swallowed you up; again farewell!"
Her companion did not speak, but turned coldly away, while Mrs. Belmont, with a heart lighter than it had been for many months, tripped down the steps. New resolutions had taken possession of her soul, and with them had entered a ray of cheering light. The door had been thrown ajar for the spirit of penitence, but how dark the long closed chamber appeared, how ghostly the spectral memories that crouched among its shadows! The "broken and contrite heart" had not as yet opened the windows to the glories of the noonday sun of righteousness; and the door was reclosed, and upon the outside the new resolves were laid with trembling hands. She was Mrs. Belmont again—the mistress of Rosedale, and nevermore would she stoop to fraud or ignominy! Her daughter would come to her and ask for the mother-love her disobedience had forfeited, and she would humbly grant it! Colonel Hamilton was not one to be ashamed of; and then the dark night at the seashore, the cry of the abducted Lily rolled its burden of remorse close where the new resolutions were lying, and she trembled as the engine whistled its frightful alarm—something was on the track! "O God! What if Thy anger should fall upon me, where O where shall the sinner appear?" burst from her lips as she covered her face with her hands.
"There is no danger," shouted the brakeman at last; "the track is clear." And with folded hands she rode on breathing freely once more.