Her tears, her reiterated vow soothed her. She rose from her knees, by-and-by, and sat on the bed, as she had sat when she held her dying lover in her arms. Gradually her head sank on the pillow where his head had lain, and she fell asleep.
"Past two o'clock, and a rainy night," called the watchman in the square.
Antonia did not wake till after five. The dead man was in her dreams through those three hours of deepest sleep. It was not George Stobart's impassioned embrace that haunted her slumber. The arms that encircled her, the lips that kissed her, were the arms and lips of the lover irrevocably lost, and there was a poignant joy in that embrace. Her wedding night! The words were repeated in her dreams. It was a night of dreams that ratified her promise to the dead. Surely he was near her! The voice that sounded so close to her ear, that very voice she knew so well, the lips whose touch thrilled her, gave her the assurance of immortality; and in some dim land she could not picture, under conditions beyond the limit of human intelligence, they two would meet again, husband and wife, spirit or flesh, reunited for ever.
George Stobart was at Kilrush House before nine o'clock. His patience could endure no longer. He had spent the night as he spent that other and much more miserable night after Whitefield's sermon, wandering about the waste places between Lambeth Palace and Vauxhall. Slumber or rest was out of the question.
The hall porter was more awake than usual, and answered his inquiry briskly.
"No, sir, not at home. Her ladyship has left London. She will lie at Devizes to-night, on her way to Ireland."
"Gone! Impossible!"
"It was very sudden, sir, and as much as could be done. 'Twas nearly six o'clock this morning when the servants had their orders. Her ladyship takes only Miss Potter, her French waiting woman, and one footman, in her travelling carriage and a post-chaise."
"What time did they leave?"