It was significant of the real nature of her relations to Mrs. Vereker that she shrank especially from seeking her now, in her time of sorrow, or following her counsel. Mrs. Vereker was essentially a fine-weather friend. The task which Maud had now in hand was something deeper and graver than anything that the other's feelings reached. What lay before her now to do, or to endure, was something between her husband and herself, and it would be profanity for a stranger to come into that sacred region. Mrs. Vereker's advice would, Maud knew instinctively, be all wrong. She herself felt already what she ought to do. She knelt weeping on the sofa, and the thoughts of sorrow, humiliation, remorse, came pouring thick upon her troubled mind. To what a precipice's edge had not her folly and madness brought her! her fair fame darkened, her husband's name dishonoured, her vows of love and honour how badly kept! Oh, how unutterably weak, faithless, heartless she had been! How ghastly all the afternoon's adventures, the evening's folly, seemed! how wicked, how base, how altogether bad! She had felt the thought stinging all the while, but other, stronger feelings had helped her to ignore it and forget. Now there was no other feeling, and it was overwhelming.
There was only one thing left to do, one good, one hope left—to fly to her husband's side, to pour out the pent-up stream of confession, repentance, and love, and, if only God would spare him, never, never leave him again!
When Boldero came in again Maud was herself again. 'I am better and stronger now,' she said; 'the news came upon me too suddenly, but now I am calm. I have settled what I ought to do, and you must help me. I shall go down to him at once.'
'Indeed, you cannot do that,' Boldero said, decisively; 'it would be excessively wrong.'
'Indeed, indeed I will!' cried Maud; 'I feel that I ought and must. What is there to stop me?'
'It is out of the question,' said the other; 'you will be running into a great deal of danger unnecessarily.'
'I have no strength to talk about it,' said Maud, 'but I must go or I shall die, and you must help me. Do you mean me to stay quietly here, and Jem dying by himself? My God, my God! why did I ever leave him?'
Here Maud threw herself on the sofa, and cried a longer, sadder, more heartfelt cry than ever in her life before. Boldero went again into the garden in despair, for it was in vain, he saw, to try to soothe her.
It ended, of course, in Boldero telegraphing for two relays of horses to be sent out from the Camp, and sending out two more as fast as possible, to get as far as might be on the way for the forced march of fifty miles which Maud and he were, it was settled, at once to undertake. She was to rest for a few hours, start at three o'clock, get on as far as they could in the cool, rest through the day, and complete the remainder of the journey the following night. They would be at the Camp, Boldero reckoned, by the morning of the day after to-morrow.
It required all his official resources to organise such a journey, but a Collector on his march can do anything; and Boldero, with whom Maud was by a sudden reaction of sentiment rapidly being promoted from heroine to saint, was determined that her journey, so far as in him lay, should be as comfortable as money and care could make it.