During the remainder of that terrible day Girlie stayed in bed. And to count the tardy minutes against Pikey’s return was her only occupation. Alas, it began to seem presently that the duenna would never come back. Hour after hour passed. Girlie’s heart sank to zero. Visions of ignominious disaster rose before her eyes. Lying there, passing in review all that had happened in the last incredible ten days it was impossible to recognize in such a queer adventuress the rather prim and certainly retiring person she had always known herself to be. Some strange virus had infected her. Force of example in the first place, no doubt, but allied also to a vaulting ambition which had o’erleaped itself.
Nine o’clock struck. Would Pikey never come back? Soon, however, the hostess came to see if her guest was quite comfortable, and to bid her good-night. The kind lady was full of solicitude. She felt sure that Lady Elfreda was a delicate flower and that the heavy task laid upon her had proved too much for her strength. The doctor had prescribed a sleeping draught which, in the absence of the maid, Mrs. Minever herself administered. The patient was then assured that the doctor would pay her a visit the next morning, and then the yellow chrysanthemum lady gave the sufferer a kiss and left her to a much needed night’s repose.
Despite the draught, however, Girlie had never in her life felt so little like sleeping. Wide-eyed and miserable, she tossed on a damp pillow, awaiting the arrival of the one person who could help her now. Surely Elfreda must come to the rescue. And she must come to-night. There was no time to lose. For it seemed to the guilty sufferer that it was of the last importance that Mrs. Minever and her guests should be prepared for the truth before the truth was rudely revealed by Lord Carabbas.
Shortly after ten Pikey returned. But she returned alone. Very tired and sorely disgruntled she had only cold comfort to offer. Her reception, to say the least, had been ungracious. And Elfreda had merely laughed when she was told that her father had been sent for, but her message to Miss Cass was that she would come to Clavering Park in the course of the next day and clear things up. In the meantime, in the cool and cynical words of Elfreda, the best thing for Miss Cass was to stop in bed.
Even this simple alternative proved to be a counsel of perfection. Left to her own devices throughout the darkness of many interminable hours, Girlie’s torments grew. The sleeping draught could not cope with her agitated brain. After a while, unable to lie still, she paced the large room. Why had she done as she had done? What madness had urged her? Was there no way of escape!
Between five and six o’clock, however, of that long vigil she came to a final resolve. She decided to go away. Exactly where her very small resources would take her she did not know, but in her present state of mind any place in the three kingdoms was to be preferred to Clavering Park.
Accordingly, fired with resolve, she packed a few necessities of travel into the most portable case she could find. She then dressed for a journey and with a sinking heart examined once again the contents of her purse. Her means, alas, were but two pounds seven shillings—two pounds seven shillings with which to face a cruelly inhospitable world!
That brutal fact must have given her pause had anything been capable of doing so now. But so little was she a reasonable being just then that the sheer hopelessness of such a flight could not turn her from her purpose. Before setting out on her travels she sat down at an escritoire and scribbled a hasty and tremulous line.
“I cannot bear this a moment longer. I am going away—I don’t know where. E. H. Cass.”
She sealed the note in an envelope duly addressed “To the Lady Elfreda Catkin.” This done, she adjusted that lady’s velours hat and fur coat, grasped her traveling bag and leather-handled umbrella and crept noiselessly, like the little thief she felt herself to be, out of King Edward’s room and down the richly carpeted central staircase.