Ethie's voice was not quite steady, for she was not accustomed to deception of this kind, and the first step was hard. But Mr. Bailey was not at all suspicious, and concluded the bargain at once; and two hours later Ethie's piano was standing between the south windows of Mrs. Bailey's apartment, and Ethie, in her own room, was counting a roll of three hundred dollars, and deciding how far it would go.
"There's my pearls," she said, "if worst comes to worst I can sell them and my diamond ring."
She did not mean Daisy's ring. She would not barter that, or take it with her, either. Daisy never intended it for a runaway wife, and Ethelyn must leave it where Richard would find it when he came back and found her gone. And then as Ethie in her anger exulted over Richard's surprise and possible sorrow when he found himself deserted, some demon from the pit whispered in her ear, "Give him back the wedding ring. Leave that for him, too, and so remove every tie which once bound you to him."
It was hard to put off Daisy's ring, and Ethelyn paused and reflected as the clear stone seemed to reflect the fair, innocent face hanging on the walls at Olney. But Ethie argued that she had no right to it, and so the dead girl's ring was laid aside, and then the trembling fingers fluttered about the plain gold band bearing the date of her marriage. But when she essayed to remove that, too, blood-red circles danced before her eyes, and such a terror seized her that her hands dropped powerless into her lap and the ring remained in its place.
It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and the cars for Olney left at seven. She was going that way as far as Milford, where she could take another route to the East. She would thus throw Richard off the track if he tried to follow her, and also avoid immediate remark in the hotel. They would think it quite natural that in her husband's absence she should go for a few days to Olney, she reasoned; and they did think so in the office when at six she asked that her trunk be taken to the station. Her rooms were all in order. She had made them so herself, sweeping and dusting, and even leaving Richard's dressing-gown and slippers by the chair where he usually sat the evenings he was at home. The vacancy left by the piano would strike him at once, she knew, and so she moved a tall bookcase up there, and put a sofa where the bookcase had been, and a large chair where the sofa had been, and pushed the center table into the large chair's place; and then her work was done--the last she would ever do in that room, or for Richard either. The last of everything is sad, and Ethie felt a thrill of pain as she whispered to herself, "It is the last, last time," and then thought of the outer world which lay all unknown before her. She would not allow herself to think, lest her courage should give way, and tried, by dwelling continually upon Richard's cruel words, to steel her heart against the good impulses which were beginning to suggest that what she was doing might not, after all, be the wisest course. What would the world say?--and dear Aunt Barbara, too? How it would wring her heart when she heard the end to which her darling had come! And Andy--simple, conscientious, praying Andy--Ethie's heart came up in her throat when she thought of him and his grief at her desertion.
"I will write to Andy," she said. "I will tell him how thoughts of him almost deterred me from my purpose," and opening her little writing desk, which Richard gave her at Christmas, she took up her pen and held it poised a moment, while something said: "Write to Richard, too. Surely you can do so much for him. You can tell him the truth at last, and let him know how he misjudged you."
And so the name which Ethie first wrote down upon the paper was not "Dear Brother Andy," but simply that of "Richard."