"Good-night."
She stood a moment listening to the soft rustle of Miss Silver's skirts in the passage, then, slowly and mechanically, she began to prepare for her night's work.
She took a long, shrouding mantle, wrapped it around her, drew the hood over her head, and exchanged her slippers for stout walking shoes. Then she unlocked her writing-case and drew forth a roll of bank-notes, thrust them into her bosom, and stood ready.
But she paused an instant yet. She stood before one of the full-length mirrors, looking at her spectral face, so hollow, so haggard, out of which all the youth and beauty seemed gone.
"And this is what one short month ago he called bright and beautiful—this wasted, sunken-eyed vision. Youth and beauty, love and trust and happiness, home and husband, all lost. Oh, my father, what have you done?"
She gave one dry, tearless sob. The clock struck the quarter past.
The sound aroused her.
"My mother," she said—"let me think I go to meet my mother. Sinful, degraded, an outcast, but still my mother. Let me think of that, and be brave."
She opened her door; the stillness of death reigned. She glided down the corridor, down the sweeping stair-way, the soft carpeting muffling every tread—the dim night-lamps lighting her on her way.
No human sound startled her. All in the house were peacefully asleep—all save that flying figure, and one other wicked watcher. She gained the door in safety. It yielded to her touch. She opened it, and was out alone in the black, gusty night.
Harriet Kingsland's brave heart quailed only for a moment; then she plunged resolutely forward into the gloom. Slipping, stumbling, falling, rising again, the wind beating in her face, the branches catching like angry hands at her garments—still she hurried on. It was a long, long, tortuous path, but it came to an end. The roar of the sea sounded awfully loud as it rose in sullen majesty, the flags of the stone terrace rang under her feet. Panting, breathless, cold as death, she leaned against the iron railing, her hands pressed hard over her tumultuous heart.