"I will go to Talbot," she thought. "He is a good man. I will go to him; I shall have no shame now in telling him all. He will advise me what to do; he will break this discovery to my poor father."
Aurora had dimly foreseen this misery when she had spoken to Lucy Bulstrode at Felden; she had dimly foreseen a day in which all would be discovered, and she would fly to Lucy to ask for a shelter.
She looked at her watch.
"A quarter past three," she said. "There is an express that leaves Doncaster at five. I could walk the distance in the time."
She unlocked the door, and ran up-stairs to her own rooms. There was no one in the dressing-room; but her maid was in the bedroom, arranging some dresses in a huge wardrobe.
Aurora selected her plainest bonnet and a large gray cloak, and quietly put them on before the cheval glass in one of the pretty French windows. The maid, busy with her own work, did not take any particular notice of her mistress's actions; for Mrs. Mellish was accustomed to wait upon herself, and disliked any officious attention.
"How pretty the rooms look!" Aurora thought, with a weary sigh; "how simple and countrified! It was for me that the new furniture was chosen,—for me that the bath-room and conservatory were built."
She looked through the vista of brightly-carpeted rooms.
Would they ever seem as cheerful as they had once done to their master? Would he still occupy them, or would he lock the doors, and turn his back upon the old house in which he had lived such an untroubled life for nearly two-and-thirty years?
"My poor boy, my poor boy!" she thought. "Why was I ever born to bring such sorrow upon him?"