CHAPTER XI.
THE WORTH OF A DIAMOND.
Flower quite made up her mind to go away again. Her mood, however, had completely changed. She was no longer in a passion; on the contrary, she felt stricken and wounded. She would go away now to hide herself, because her face, her form, the sound of her step, the echo of her voice, must be painful to those whom she had injured. She shuddered as she recalled Firefly’s sad words:
“Father says it is wrong to hate any one, but, of course, we cannot love you.”
She felt that she could never look Polly in the face again, that Helen’s gentle smile would be torture to her. Oh, of course she must go away; she must go to-night.
She was very tired, for she had really scarcely rested since her fit of mad passion, and the previous night she had never gone to bed. Still all this mattered nothing. There was a beating in her heart, there was a burning sting of remorse awakened within her, which made even the thought of rest impossible.
Flower was a very wild and untaught creature; her ideas of right and wrong were of the crudest. It seemed to her now that the only right thing was to run away.
When the house was quiet, she once more opened her little cabinet, and took from thence the last great treasure which it contained. It was one solitary splendid unset diamond. She had not the least idea of its value, but she knew that it would probably fetch a pound or two. She had not the least notion of the value of money or of the preciousness of the gem which she held in her hand, but she thought it likely that it would supply her immediate needs.