She went to her room, in a different part of the house from where Nettie lay; and putting on her travelling-dress, an old bonnet and coarse shawl she had found belonging to Mrs. Brady, looked in the glass to see if in the dusk might hope to pass through Kingslough unrecognized.
“With a thick veil I think I shall be safe,” she said; and then she took off the shawl, carrying it over her arm, and put a thick lace fall in her pocket, and taking the key of a side-door with her, passed through one of the drawing-room windows into the gardens, and so made her way unobserved out of the grounds of Maryville.
Once in the fields of the Castle Farm she knew every inch of the country, and this knowledge enabled her to reach, by unfrequented roads and by-paths, that part of the shore lying beneath the hill on which Ballylough Abbey stood.
There on a great piece of rock she sat down to rest, and wait till the twilight deepened and darkened.
When it was fairly dusk she resumed her walk, still along the beach, never entering Kingslough till she reached the further end of the town, whence through narrow lanes and back streets she arrived at Mr. Hanlon’s surgery.
Her hand trembled so much at first that she could not pull the bell. At last she heard it tinkle, and to her great relief the door was opened by Mr. Hanlon in person.
“I wish to speak to you, if you please,” she said, in a voice so low and quivering, that the poor attempt she made to disguise it was unnecessary.
“Certainly; come in.”
“In private,” she suggested.
“You have come to tell me some great secret, I suppose,” he remarked jocularly; desiring, apparently, to put his timid patient at her ease. “Go in there,” he added, pointing to a parlour beyond the surgery, where he had no doubt been reading, for a lamp stood on the table, and a book lay open near it. “Now what is it?” he went on, placing a chair for his visitor, and taking one himself.