"Jamison," the young lady said, her tones clear and calm, looking the man straight in the eyes, "your master has been obliged to leave Wales suddenly, and will not return. You may spend the night in packing up. To-morrow, by the earliest train, I return to Cheshire."
"Yes, me lady."
Not a muscle of Jamison's face moved—not a vestige of surprise or any other earthly emotion was visible in his smooth-shaven face. If she had said, "To-morrow by the earliest train I shall take a trip to the moon," Mr. Jamison would have bowed and said, "Yes, me lady," in precisely the same tone.
"Is dinner served?" his young mistress asked, looking at her watch.
"If not, serve immediately. I shall be there in two minutes."
She kept her word. With that light in her eyes, that pale composure on her face, she swept into the dining-room, and took her place at the glittering table. Jamison waited upon her—watching her, of course, as a cat a mouse.
"She took her soup and fish, her slice of pheasant and her jelly, I do assure you, just the same as hever, Hemily," he related afterward to the lady's maid; "but her face was whiter than the tablecloth, and her eyes had a look in them I'd rather master would face than me. She's one of the 'igh-stepping sort, depend upon it, and quiet as she takes it now, there'll be the deuce and all to pay one of these days."
She rose at last and went back to the drawing-room. How brilliantly the moon shone on the sleeping sea; how fantastic the town and castle looked in the romantic light. She stood by the window long, looking out. No thought of sympathy for him—of trying to find him out on the morrow—entered her mind. He had deserted her; sane or mad, that was enough for the present to know.
She took out a purse, that fairies and gold dollars alone might have entered, and looked at its contents. By sheer good luck and chance, it contained three or four sovereigns—more than sufficient for the return journey. To-morrow morning she would go back to Powyss Place and tell Lady Helena; after that—
Her thoughts broke—to-night she could not look beyond. The misery, the shame, the horrible scandal, the loneliness, the whole wreck of life that was to come, she could not feel as yet. She knew what she would do to-morrow—after that all was a blank.
What a lovely night it was! What were they doing at home? What was Trixy about just now? What was—Charley? She had made up her mind never to think of Charley more. His face rose vividly before her now in the moonrays, pale, stern, contemptuous. "Oh!" she passionately thought, "how he must scorn, how he must despise me!" "Whatever comes," he had said to her that rainy morning at Sandypoint; "whatever the new life brings, you are never to blame me!" How long ago that rainy morning seemed now. What an eternity since that other night in the snow. If she had only died beside him that night—the clear, white, painless death—unspotted from the world! If she had only died that night!