?

She was told that Zoe had gone off on her pony to take a basket of good
things to a poor old woman down the river three miles away. She would
be gone all morning. By so much, fate was favouring her; for the child's
presence would but heighten the emotion of her exit from that place
where her youth had been wasted. Already the few things she had meant
to take away were secreted in a safe place some distance from the house,
beside the path she meant to take when she left Jean Jacques for
ever. George Masson wanted her, they were to meet to-day, and she was
going--going somewhere out of this intolerable dullness and discontent.

When she pushed her coffee-cup aside and rose from the table without
eating, she went straight to her looking-glass and surveyed herself with
a searching eye. Certainly she was young enough (she said to herself) to
draw the eyes of those who cared for youth and beauty. There was not a
grey hair in the dark brown of her head, there was not a wrinkle--yes,
there were two at the corners of her mouth, which told the story of her
restlessness, of her hunger for the excitement of which she had been
deprived all these years. To go back to Cadiz?--oh, anywhere, anywhere,
so that her blood could beat faster; so that she could feel the stir
of life which had made her spirit flourish even in the dangers of the
far-off day when Gonzales was by her side.

She looked at her guitar. She was sorry she could not take that away
with her. But Jean Jacques would, no doubt, send it after her with his
curse. She would love to play it once again with the old thrill; with
the thrill she had felt on the night of Zoe's birthday a little while
ago, when she was back again with her lover and the birds in the gardens
of Granada. She would sing to someone who cared to hear her, and to
someone who would make her care to sing, which was far more important.
She would sing to the master-carpenter. Though he had not asked her to
go with him--only to meet in a secret place in the hills--she meant to
do so, just as she once meant to marry Jean Jacques, and had done so. It
was true she would probably not have married Jean Jacques, if it had not
been for the wreck of the Antoine; but the wreck had occurred, and she
had married him, and that was done and over so far as she was concerned.
She had determined to go away with the master-carpenter, and though he
might feel the same hesitation as that which Jean Jacques had shown--she
had