She caught sight of her dishevelled self in the long mirror of the wardrobe, and her own reflection startled her. All the horrors of that struggle crowded upon her. She put up her hands and pushed her thick dark hair from her white fevered brow.
“Where am I?” she cried aloud. “What will dad think?”
She staggered to the door, but found it locked and bolted from the outside. Then she went to the window and pulling aside the blind judged by the light that it must be about eleven o’clock in the morning. She tried to open the window but the sashes had been screwed together. The outlook was upon a blank wall.
Before the glass she rearranged her disordered dress, and sinking upon the side of the bed tried to recollect all that had occurred. But her head throbbed, her throat burned, and all the past seemed uncertain and indistinct.
The only fact which stood out clear in her mind as she sat there, inert and helpless, was the bitter truth which the man had spoken. The scoundrel who had represented himself to be “Captain Wetherton,” the friend of her lover, had showed himself in his true colours. He had brought her there for one dastardly purpose alone—to ruin her in Frank’s esteem.
She wondered what had really occurred—and while wondering, and dreading, she burst into a flood of bitter tears.
At one moment she made up her mind to batter down the door, or smash the window. But if she did that, she would, she feared, bring forth that man now so hateful to her.
She detested him. No. Rather would she starve and die there than ever look upon his blackguardly face again. The fellow was a coward, a vile scoundrel who had taken advantage of her eagerness to meet her lover, and had matched his brute strength against hers.
What should she do? How could she ever face Frank again?
She must have been carried there and placed upon that bed. She must, too, have lain for fully twelve hours in blank unconsciousness.