What an end to her mad adventure!
She was very tired, and all the excitement which had kept her up during the past day was now merged into a great terror. What should she do? Had she contracted infection in that terrible house? Ought she to be vaccinated?
All her thoughts were for herself. She was more angry with Constance than sorry for her. How severely that groom ought to be blamed for not delivering the note!
It was after eleven o’clock when she got back to Fairleigh. Had things turned out as she expected she would not have got back nearly so soon. The house was in darkness except for a light in the library window. The window was shut, and so were the shutters, but the light came out on the gravel through one or two of the chinks.
Augusta knew that Captain Richmond was there. He generally stayed in the library for an hour or so after the others had gone to bed. Just for a moment a wild longing came over her to tell him what had happened—to seek his advice. If she were infected, had she any right to infect the others?
She must not attempt to go back to her room while Captain Richmond was in the library, for the library was almost immediately under her room.
“What a nuisance his sitting up so late!” she thought.
She was too tired to walk another step. She sank down on a garden seat, wrapped her mackintosh round her, and tried to think; but her head was giddy, and her brain in a whirl. Her one and only desire was to get back safely to her room—to fling herself on her bed and lose consciousness in sleep.
Even the prize, the great and glorious prize, was as nothing to her now. Even school in Paris seemed remote and uninteresting. Suppose she sickened for smallpox. Suppose her face, so smooth and fair and attractive-looking, was altered and made ugly. Suppose she—died.
“Oh, why doesn’t that horrid man go to bed?” thought the girl. She jumped up and paced about on the grass. She had been too hot; she was now too cold.