A gentle, tender maiden, love-sick and mind-sick, yearning so piteously for a little mercy, or sympathy, or kindness, and treated like a mutinous soldier, because she loved so honestly and purely,—­is it any wonder that her hand went to her bosom and clasped the cold, hard keys that promised her life and freedom?  I think not.  I have no patience with young women who allow themselves to be carried away by an innate bad taste and love for effect, quarrelling with the peaceful destiny that a kind Providence has vouchsafed them, and with an existence which they are too dull to make interesting to themselves or to anyone else; finally making a desperate and foolish dash at notoriety by a runaway marriage with the first scamp they can find, and repenting in poverty and social ostracism the romance they conceived in wealth and luxury.  They deserve their fate.  But when a sensitive girl is motherless, cut off from friends and pleasures, presented with the alternative of solitude or marriage with some detested man, or locked up to forget a dream which was half realised and very sweet, then the case is different.  If she breaks her bonds, and flies to the only loving heart she knows, forgive her, and pray Heaven to have mercy on her, for she takes a fearful leap into the dark.

Hedwig felt the keys, and took them from her dress, and pressed them to her cheek, and her mind was made up.  She glanced at the small gilt clock, and saw that the hands pointed to seven.  Five hours were before her in which to make her preparations, such as they could be.

In accordance with her father’s orders, given when he left her, Temistocle served her dinner in her sitting-room; and the uncertainty of the night’s enterprise demanded that she should eat something, lest her strength should fail at the critical moment.  Temistocle volunteered the information that her father had gone to the baron’s apartment, and had not been seen since.  She heard in silence, and bade the servant leave her as soon as he had ministered to her wants.  Then she wrote a short letter to her father, telling him that she had left him, since he had no place for her in his heart, and that she had gone to the one man who seemed ready both to love and to protect her.  This missive she folded, sealed, and laid in a prominent place upon the table addressed to the count.

She made a small bundle,—­very neatly, for she is clever with her fingers,—­and put on a dark travelling dress, in the folds of which she sewed such jewels as were small and valuable and her own.  She would take nothing that her father had given her.  In all this she displayed perfect coolness and foresight.

The castle became intensely quiet as the evening advanced.  She sat watching the clock.  At five minutes before midnight she took her bundle and her little shoes in her hand, blew out her candle, and softly left the room.

CHAPTER XX