CHAPTER XVII.
Camille could not get home fast enough, she was so eager to go down to the river and search for the fatal bouquet that Lord Stuart had sent her. It had rushed over her suddenly that when Robert Lacy had come upon her he had carried something in his hand—the flowers, of course—and in his astonishment at seeing her they had fallen from his grasp. They must be lying there now, and she must hasten to destroy them before they were found.
She sprung hastily from the carriage, and went into the house with eager footsteps.
“Norman, I am going upstairs to rest,” she said. “This affair has completely unnerved me. To think that that poor man should have destroyed himself when upon an errand to me. It is simply horrible. I shall take some valerian and lie down for an hour. And you, I suppose, will go and sit awhile with your mother and the little invalid?”
“Yes,” he replied, mechanically, and they went upstairs arm in arm. Then they paused, for Camille had put up her face to be kissed.
He stooped and pressed his lips gently to hers.
“I am sorry you are so unnerved. Do not forget to take the valerian, dear,” he said, and held her in his arms tenderly for a moment.
If she had known that this was the last, last time they would hold her, would she have been so impatient to be gone?
But she could think of nothing but the tell-tale flowers lying on the river-bank ready to betray her at any moment. She felt as if she could fly to the spot.
She turned quickly from him and sought her own apartments, but she only remained long enough to make sure that he had entered his mother’s room ere she fled from the house, as if driven by pursuing fiends, to the river-bank.