"I shall surely be killed," she said to herself in terror.
But no—the delicate reed to which she had trusted her existence did not fail her. She waited breathlessly a moment, then feeling that it still held secure, she cautiously slipped one hand and then the other down to a lower hold on the body of the vine. In that way, with many frightened heart-beats, with sore and bleeding hands, and at infinite pains, she at length accomplished the descent, and stood upon the ground enfolded like a mantle by the thick darkness and pouring rain.
At the gate she paused again, and looked up at one window in a wing of the house where a night-light glimmered faintly.
"Farewell, Leon Vinton," she said, again. "May the vengeance of God be swift to overtake and punish you for your awful sins!"
She opened the gate softly and stepped out into the wet and slushy road, wetting her thin, white satin slippers and silk stockings through and through at the first step. She did not care for it, she scarcely felt it, her heart was beating so quick and fast with joy.
"I am free!" was the exultant cry of her heart. "I am free—I am going back to my husband. I shall tell him how fondly I have learned to love him since I promised to be his wife. I will cling so closely to his side that Leon's vindictive rage can never touch me!"
She pushed on steadily through the mud and water, her long garments speedily becoming soaked with the watery elements and greatly impeding her ease and rapidity of motion, while her heart began to beat wildly with terror at the darkness, the desolation and loneliness of the country road.
"I am very tired," she moaned, after traveling what seemed to her a long distance. "It is five miles to the city. I must have come two miles at least. I wonder if I can hold out to get there. My feet are so heavy with the mud and the water that I can scarcely lift them. I must sit down here and rest myself one minute—only one little minute!"
She dropped down like a log on the grass by the side of the road, and the first pale beams of the watery dawn just breaking in the east, showed her deathly-white face just fading into unconsciousness.