take me ten minutes to get
to the corner of the road. The house is quiet now.'

Olive ran down a few steps, but at that moment heavy footsteps and a
jingling of glasses announced that the butler was carrying glasses from
the dining-room to the pantry. 'When will he cease, when will he cease;
will he hang about that passage all night?' the girl asked herself
tremblingly; and so cruel, so poignant had her suspense become, that had
it been prolonged much further her overwrought nerves would have given
way, and she would have lapsed into a fit of hysterics. But the
tray-full of glasses she had heard jingling were now being washed, and
the irritative butler did not stir forth again. This was Olive's
opportunity. From the proximity of the drawing-room to the hall-door it
was impossible for her to open it without being heard; the kitchen-door
was equally, even more, dangerous, and she could hear the servants
stirring in the passages; there was no safe way of getting out of the
house unseen, except through the dining-room.

The candles were lighted, the crumbs were still on the tablecloth;
passing behind the red curtain she unlocked the French window, and she
shivered in the keen wind that was blowing.

It was almost as bright as day. A September moon rose red, and in a
broken and fragmentary way the various aspects of the journey that lay
before her were anticipated: as she ran across the garden swards she saw
the post-horses galloping in front of her; as her nervous fingers strove
to unfasten the wicket, she thought of the railway-carriage; and as she
passed under the great dark trunks of the chestnut-trees she dreamed of
Edward's arm that would soon be cast protectingly around her, and his
face; softer than the leafy shadows above her, would be leaned upon her,
and his eyes filled with a brighter light than the moon's would look
down into hers.

The white meadow that she crossed so swiftly gleamed like the sea, and
the cows loomed through the greyness like peaceful apparitions. But the
dark wood with its sepulchral fir-tops and mysteriously spreading
beech-trees was full of formless terror, and once the girl screamed as
the birds flew with an awful sound through the dark undergrowth. A
gloomy wood by night has terrors for the bravest, and it was only the
certainty that she was leaving girl-life--chaperons, waltz-tunes, and
bitter sneering, for ever--that gave courage to proceed. A bit of
moss-grown wall, a singularly sh