But there was one who sat bowed, collapsed, shuddering in his seat, who recognized that voice, and knew what those awful words meant; and that one was Earl De Courcy.
“She has murdered her! she has murdered her!” was the cry that seemed rending his very heart with horror and despair.
CHAPTER XII.
WOMAN’S HATE.
“Oh! woman wronged can cherish hate More deep and dark than manhood may; And when the mockery of fate Hath left revenge her chosen way, Then all the wrongs which time hath nursed Upon her spoiler’s head shall burst, And all her grief, and woe, and pain, Burn fiercely on his heart and brain.” —Whittier.
Maddened, despairing, blaspheming, cursing earth and heaven, God and man, hating life, and sunshine, and the world, the wretched gipsy queen had fled from those who gathered around her on that morning full of woe, and fled far away, she neither knew nor cared whither.
She sped along through lanes, streets, and crowded thoroughfares, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, conscious of nothing but her own maddening wrongs, glaring before her like a maniac, and dashing fiercely to the ground with her clenched fist all those who, moved by pity, would have stopped her. On, like a bolt from a bow, until the city seemed to fade away, and she saw green fields, and pretty cottages, and waving trees, and knew that she had left London behind her.
Night came on before she thought of stopping for a single instant to rest. She had walked far that day; her feet were bleeding and blistered; for nearly three days she had touched nothing but cold water, yet her iron frame was unsubdued—she felt no weariness, no faintness, no hunger. The indomitable spirit within, sustained her. She thought of nothing, cared for nothing, but revenge; and for that her very soul was crying out with a longing—a hunger that nothing could appease. She dared not stop for one moment to think; she felt she would go mad if she did; so she hurried on and on, as if driven on by some fierce, inward power, against which it was useless to contend.
How the night passed, how the morning came, how she found herself in the peaceful depths of the forest, she never could tell. How, ere that sun set, she found herself with her tribe, lying prostrate on the cold ground, conscious, like one in the most frightful nightmare, of what was passing around her, yet unable to comprehend what it meant—all was vague and unreal still. Past, and present, and future, all were mingled together in one dark, dreadful chaos, of which nothing was real but the dull, muffled pain at her heart, and the word revenge, that kept ever dancing in letters of blood-red flame before her hot, scorching eyes.