“I cannot go,” answered Hester, who had thrown herself back again on her bed; “it’s useless to expect it of me—my head is so giddy that I could not rise to save my life; you can tell Mr. Jacob so with my compliments, Mrs. Ferguson. Perhaps I’ll be better in the morning after I have had a bit of sleep.”
“Well, if you are as bad as all that,” answered Mrs. Ferguson, “you had best take off your clothes and get right into bed. I’ll tell Jacob you ain’t well enough to see him, and have gone to bed.”
“Yes, please do,” answered Hester.
Mrs. Ferguson left the room.
As soon as her footsteps died away in the distance, Hester raised her head from the pillow and began to listen intently. Not hearing a sound, she rose, crossed her room, and turned the key in the lock. It turned smoothly, as if the lock had been recently oiled.
Hester then went and stood by the window. Her little room was high up in a certain wing of the old house; it looked out across the garden. Night had fallen over the place, and the moon, clearer and brighter than on the previous night, lit up the landscape with a fantastic and weird distinctness. Hester clasped her two hands above her head and gazed steadily out. Her dark eyes were full of a curious mixture of feeling. Emotion, despair, chased away the almost cruel expression which, on most occasions, characterised them.
“I have gone a step too far,” she muttered. “I thought I was taking in others, and I was took in myself. I am fit to kill myself. There, was that nine that struck?”
A little clock on the mantelpiece had signalled the hour.
Hester went across the room to a wardrobe, which she opened. She took out a cloak and flung it over her shoulders, and then with stealthy and swift movements approached the door. She unlocked it and went into the passage outside. The house was quiet as the grave; the servants were at supper far away; the mad lady was quiet in the Queen Anne wing; Mrs. Rowton and Lady Georgina Strong were at some distance in one of the drawing rooms. Hester’s opportunity had come.