Just one peep she would give at the drawing-rooms above. Just one. No one would notice her. Amidst the crowds pressing in she should escape observation. One yearning look, and then she would turn back and escape the way she came.
Three or four persons in a group, strangers to her, were passing upwards. Adela glided on behind them. Their names were shouted out as her sister's and Sir Sandy's had been; as others were; and she stole after them, within the portals.
But only to steal back again. Nay, to start back. For a too-well-remembered voice had greeted the visitors: "I am so glad to see you," and a tall, distinguished form stood there with outstretched hands: the voice and form of her husband. Later, she knew how it was. The faintness succeeding to the operation (a very slight one), which had alarmed Mrs. Dalrymple herself, and also the surgeon and the Rector, had passed off, and she was really in no danger. So that when Sir Francis learnt this on his arrival at Netherleigh, he found himself at liberty to return.
Feeling as if she must die in her agony of shame, shame at her unwarrantable intrusion, which the unexpected sight of her husband brought home to her, Adela got down the stairs again unseen and unnoticed, and encountered Hilson in the hall.
"Can I do anything for you, my lady?—can I get you anything?" he asked, his tone betraying his compassion for her evident sickness.
"Yes," she said, "yes. I want to go home; I find I am not well enough to remain: perhaps one of the carriages outside would take me?"
"Can I assist you, Lady Adela?" said a voice at her side, from one who was then entering and had overheard the colloquy: and Adela turned to behold Gerard Hope.
"Is it you?" she faintly cried. "I thought you were abroad, Gerard. Are you making one of the crowd here tonight?"
"Not as a guest. These grand things no longer belong to me. I am in England again, and at work—a clerk in your husband's house, Lady Adela; and I have come here tonight to see him on a pressing matter of business."
Hilson managed it all. An obliging coachman, then setting down his freight, was only too willing to take home a sick lady. Gerard Hope and Hilson both went out with her.