"But, dear Mademoiselle, think of the trouble, the fatigue—and your lessons."
"My lessons must stand over till my return. I shall be back next Monday. Don't say another word, Hilda. There's no time to be wasted in talk. You are going to eat your breakfast. I'll wager you left home without so much as a cup of tea."
"There was nobody up," faltered Hilda, who had eaten nothing since Lady Valeria's visit, and who was suffering all the pangs of exhaustion.
"Of course not; and you have been walking and travelling, and are ready to faint at this moment," protested Louise, ringing as she spoke. "You are going to have some nice hot coffee—I have taught them to make coffee in this house, I who speak to you—and an egg, while I write to my pupils to apologise for my sudden disappearance; and precisely at twelve o'clock there will be a fly at the door to take us to the station."
"I have a cheque to cash at the Bank," said Hilda. "Perhaps the maid could get it cashed for me."
"For how much is your cheque?"
"Two hundred and fifty pounds."
"Do you think I would let my poor little slavey trot about Plymouth with two hundred and fifty pounds?" cried Mdlle. "She is as honest as the day; but the magnitude of the sum would turn her brain. She would walk into the harbour unawares. No, if you have such a cheque as that to cash, you must take it to the Bank yourself; and instead of carrying all the cash with you to Paris, you had better draw only fifty, and leave the two hundred on deposit. You can draw more when you want it."
The slavey answered the bell, a neat little handmaiden in pink cotton, who was told to get breakfast for Miss Heathcote, and to order a fly to be at the door at a quarter to twelve.
"That will allow us fifteen minutes for the Bank," said Mademoiselle, opening her desk, and beginning her letters.
Everything was done in a brisk business-like manner. It was only when they were in the train which was to take them by way of Exeter to Salisbury, and then to Southampton, that Hilda had leisure to realise the step which she had taken.
She had written to Bothwell in perfect frankness, had opened her heart to him, telling him that his happiness was dearer to her than her own, that his honour was paramount in her mind over every other consideration. And she told him that honour should constrain him to marry the woman who had been compromised by his love in the past, and who loved him unselfishly and devotedly in the present, holding her own pride as nothing when weighed against her love for him.
"No woman could act as Lady Valeria has acted this day to
