The Countess Lavinia was silent, wearily struggling with tumultuous sobs that hurt her breast. She clasped her hands over her heart and looked on the ground.
The maid leant forward. A stray ray of moonlight pierced the gently waving foliage, and showed her delicate, sharp face and the curling locks of bright gold hair that escaped from under her white muslin cap.
"Think a little, my lady, of the position you have and the power it gives you over both of them. What good would you do by running away?"
"Disgrace him, at least," came heavily from the Countess Lavinia.
"And yourself more, my lady. What would they say—'who was she but a perked-up Miss that lost her head?' Great ladies do not run away. And how would Mr. Hilton receive you?"
"But for him I had never married this man," broke out the Countess desperately. "No, I vow it! But did he not threaten to shut me up in Bedlam? You heard him tell me my grandmother had died mad, and so his daughter should if she were not Lady Lyndwood!"
"And ye were resigned," returned the maid quickly.
"I was cowed, but I would have married Marius. Yes, last spring I would have married him, so great a fool was I, and let the money go. The money! What use is it to me? What pleasure have I in seeing it go to pay his debts, to procure luxuries for his mother, to keep up the estate he mocks me with, to minister to his extravagance? My money, my father's money! And my amusement must be to see it spent on foreign Delilahs and gipsy actresses who laugh at me!"
She stopped, gasping for breath. The maid eyed her keenly, and offered no reply.