It was in the latter end of the month of September, but the season and weather were fine, and there were still hours of daylight.
Lady Bell was furnished with money; she had got an ample sum to spend at Peasmarsh. The idea which had been in her head when she had still thought of confiding her case to Mrs. Sundon, and bespeaking her support, was to be put in the way of reaching London as speedily as possible.
When in London she might apply to any survivor of Lady Lucie’s friends to hide her from Squire Trevor and his vengeance, to procure for her a separation from him, to help her to get her own livelihood. This would no longer be by the poorest place at Court—Lady Bell had resigned that aristocratic resource—Queen Charlotte was too good and happy a wife herself to pardon readily the errors of a miserable young wife.
But Lady Bell’s vision had enlarged so that she conceived—Lady Bell though she was, she might be dame de compagnie to some old lady of quality, on the model of Lady Lucie Penruddock.
Or she might turn her little talents and accomplishments, the frivolousness of which had been so scouted, to use, after all, by imparting them to the children of some great house.
Her imagination had grown, like everything else about her (she was half an inch taller since her marriage), though even her imagination could not persuade her that the bread of service would taste anything save bitter to a woman of her degree, but it would be less bitter than what she had eaten at Trevor Court and St. Bevis’s, and bitter as it might be, it was all the bread that remained to her, unless she were willing to go back and be killed by Squire Trevor.
On the contrary, she could not help rejoicing that she had left him and bondage behind, and that the world was before her. The sense of freedom and of a new life sent a certain glow and throb of elasticity through her veins.
Lady Bell trudged on alongside the ragged hedges, and keeping by the posts which marked the king’s highway, in the broken, deeply-rutted road. She ceased to see any trace of the election, beyond a spurring messenger now and again. The few travellers were of an honest though homely description. The electioneering had done good for the moment, scoured the neighbouring country, and collected the stoutest beggars, the most rampageous tramps, into their dens in Peasmarsh.
There was a rustic yeoman, mounted on his best cart-horse, with his sister behind him, clasping him round the capacious waist, trotting away to spend the evening in hunting the slipper and roasting hot cockles with some neighbours. There were farm-servants and labourers hieing home from their day’s work ere nightfall.
These wayfarers glanced with a little wonder at Lady Bell, even in her ordinary scarlet habit, and her neckcloth, as a lady who ought to be on her horse, with her servant behind her, and who might be on foot and by herself as the result of an accident, or in consequence of keeping a private appointment. But these were worthy people who took their neighbours’ adventures coolly, and did not, when they were not accosted and asked to interfere, see themselves called on to forsake their proper business and pleasure for the sake of a third party, in an adventure which might be sorry enough.