"I never thought to look at you again," she said softly. "You are all
I have left now."
She put the picture in her bosom, replaced the rest, and locked the trunk, and put the key in her purse. She sat down and counted her money. She was the possessor of twelve sovereigns—left over from Mr. Stuart, senior's, bounty. It was her whole stock of wealth with which to face and begin the world. Then she sat down resolutely to think it out. And the question rose grim before her, "What am I to do?"
"Go out into the world and work for your daily bread. Face the poverty you have feared so much, through fear of which, two days ago, you sold yourself. Go to London—it is the centre of the world; lose yourself, hide from all who ever knew you. Go to London. Work of some kind can surely be had by the willing in that mighty city. Go to London."
That was the answer that came clearly. She shrank for a moment—the thought of facing life single-handed, poor and alone in that great, terrible, pitiless city, was overwhelming. But she did not flinch from her resolve; her mind was made up. Come woe, come weal, she would go to London.
An "A. B. C." railway guide lay on the table—she consulted it. A train left Chester for London at eight o'clock, A. M. Neither Lady Helena nor any of her household was stirring at that hour. She could walk to Chesholm in the early morning, get a fly there and drive to the Chester station in time. By four in the afternoon she would be in London.
No thought of returning home ever recurred to her. Home! What home had she? Her step-mother was master and mistress in her father's house, and to return, to go back to Sandypoint, and the life she had left, was as utter an impossibility almost as though she should take a rope and hang herself. She had not the means to go if she had desired, but that made no difference. She could never go back, never see her father, or Charley, or Trixy more. Alone she must live, alone she must die.
The flood-gates were opened; she suffered this last night as women of her strong, self-contained temperament only suffer.
"Save me, O God! for the waters are come into my soul!" That was the wild, wordless prayer of her heart. Her life was wrecked, her heart was desolate; she must go forth a beggar and an outcast, and fight the bitter battle of life alone. And love, and home, and Charley might have been hers. "It might have been!" Is there any anguish in this world of anguish like that we work with our own hands?—any sorrow like that which we bring upon ourselves? In the darkness she sank down upon her knees, her face covered with her hands, tears, that were as dreadful as tears of blood, falling from her eyes. Lost—lost! all that made life worth having. To live and die alone, that was her fate!
So the black, wild night passed, hiding her, as miserable a woman as the wide earth held.
* * * * *