"For these Christ died," Ideala murmured. The words flashed through her mind, and the meaning of them was new to her. Her heart was wrung for the desolate girl, dying alone in sin and sorrow without a creature to care for her—dying alone in the arms of a strange woman, with a policeman outside guarding her. Ideala cried in her heart with an exceeding bitter cry: "God do so to him, and more also."
"Pray for me, lady."
But Ideala could not pray with a curse on her lips—and, besides, the power to pray had been taken from her for many a weary day before that. She thought of the policeman, and called him in.
"See, she is dying," she said, looking up at him helplessly; "and she has asked me to pray, and I can't. Will you?"
And, quite simply and reverently, as if it had been part of his ordinary duty, he took off his helmet and knelt down, a great rough- looking man in a hideous dress, and prayed: "Dear Lord, forgive her!"
They were the last words she heard.
CHAPTER XX.
The people seemed to have deserted the house. Even the Tawdry One had disappeared, and Ideala was obliged to lay out the poor dear girl herself, and make her ready for decent burial. As soon as she could leave the place she went, escorted by the policeman, to the fever hospital to have her things fumigated. The risk of infection had not troubled her till she remembered the likelihood of taking it to others, but as soon as she thought of that she took the necessary precautions to prevent it. She sent a message from the hospital to her maid, telling her to pack up some things and meet her at the station in time for the mail at eleven o'clock that night. She had thought of some friends who lived a nine hours' journey from her home, and had determined to go to them for a time.
She wrote to her husband also from the hospital. "The girl, Mary Morris, died of scarlet fever this afternoon in the house to which you sent her when you were tired of her," she said. "I was with her when she died. I am going to the Trelawneys to-night; but at present I have formed no plans for the future."
During the first few days of her stay with the Trelawneys she just lived from hour to hour, not thinking of anything, past, present, or to come; but out of this apathy a desire grew by degrees. She wanted to see Lorrimer. She could speak to him, and she was sure he would help and advise her. She wrote to him, telling him she particularly wished to see him on a certain day, and asking him to meet her at the station, adding by way of postscript: "I do not think I quite know what you meant when you advised me to go my own way; but if any wrong-doing were part of the programme I should not be able to carry it out. However, I feel sure that you would be the last person in the world to let me do wrong, even if I were inclined to."