Lilly worked on with feverish haste. About four o'clock she rose and went out, pausing an instant at the door, and looking back. Miss Bullins, intent upon some button-holes for which every moment of daylight was needed, did not look up. Lilly closed the door, and went up to her room.
It was small and simple, but it was the best she had known. There were some innocent efforts at decoration, a daintiness about the bed, a few books on hanging shelves, and a pretty drapery at the one window. She looked around with a sinking heart. There was a small writing-desk upon the table, and she went to it and wrote a few lines, which she sealed and directed. She packed a few articles in a satchel, put on her cloak and hat, and stole down the stairs.
Choosing the quietest street, she walked rapidly through the village until the last house was passed, and the open country lay before her, bare and brown and desolate, except for the blue hills in the distance, which, summer or winter, never lost their beauty.
Two or three farmers, jogging homeward with their week's supplies, passed her, and one offered her a lift as far as she was going, which she declined.
A mile from the village, a road turned off to the left, winding through barren fields, until lost in the pine woods. As she turned into this, a man driving toward the village reined in and called to her, warningly:
"The pest-house is up yonder!"
She merely bowed and kept on. The man stared a moment, and whipped up his horse again. It was dark in the woods, and chilly, but she felt no fear, not even when the sere bushes by the way-side rustled, or twigs snapped as if beneath the tread of some living creature.
As she came out into comparative light she saw a buggy driven rapidly toward her. She recognized its occupant at once, and with a quick heart-throb sprang behind a clump of young pines, and dropped upon her knees.
Dr. Horton drove by, his face turned toward her place of concealment. He did not know that any human eye was upon him, and the heaviness of his spirit appeared unrepressed in every feature. His eyes followed listlessly the irregular outline of the way-side walls and bushes, but it was evident that his thoughts were not of surrounding things, otherwise he must have seen the crouching figure and the white face pressed against the rough bark of the tree whose trunk she clasped.
The girl's eyes followed him until he was lost to sight in the woods. Then she came out and pursued her way.