The bed-chamber was over the
dining-room, and presently as she knelt Barbara heard Willowes
thrust back his chair, and rise to go into the hall. In five
minutes that figure would probably come up the stairs and confront
her again; it,--this new and terrible form, that was not her
husband's. In the loneliness of this night, with neither maid nor
friend beside her, she lost all self-control, and at the first sound
of his footstep on the stairs, without so much as flinging a cloak
round her, she flew from the room, ran along the gallery to the back
staircase, which she descended, and, unlocking the back door, let
herself out. She scarcely was aware what she had done till she
found herself in the greenhouse, crouching on a flower-stand.
Here she remained, her great timid eyes strained through the glass
upon the garden without, and her skirts gathered up, in fear of the
field-mice which sometimes came there. Every moment she dreaded to
hear footsteps which she ought by law to have longed for, and a
voice that should have been as music to her soul. But Edmond
Willowes came not that way. The nights were getting short at this
season, and soon the dawn appeared, and the first rays of the sun.
By daylight she had less fear than in the dark. She thought she
could meet him, and accustom herself to the spectacle.
So the much-tried young woman unfastened the door of the hot-house,
and went back by the way she had emerged a few hours ago.
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