'And I am not to go in costume, or wear a domino?' said Alison, anxiously.
'No—as a spectator only—your hat and sealskin jacket, of course; but we shall see the dancers from the promenade round the saloon, and the Flemish scene on the stage about half-past ten.'
'Can you spare me, papa?' she asked, softly.
'Yes, darling, go,' he replied, weakly but earnestly.
So a voiture was summoned, and Alison departed, after dinner, escorted by Lord Cadbury. Through the broad and spacious Rue de l'Hôpital and Rue Grande, with its quaint old houses, to the private entrance of the Théâtre des Variétés in the Rue des Escrimeurs, a narrow street, and never in all her future life did she repent of any action more bitterly.
The brief change of scene or action would draw her from herself, as she had been afflicted with severe distracting thoughts of late.
Had Bevil gone to the seat of war, or was he still in England? She was as ignorant of his movements as he nearly was of hers; but it was too probably the former, and she supposed he would soon be face to face with danger and death. Her absence—her flight it would seem—from Chilcote, she supposed, must be all unexplained to him, and, if explained, he would learn that she was with Lord Cadbury; and, after all he knew, what might he not fear and think?
Think that which might lead him to believe she was untrue, and leave him to be happy yet with some other girl, who might love him as she now loved him, and as he wished to be loved.
And more keenly did these thoughts distract her mind after the—to her—fatal night of the bal masqué.