“I must go away to-morrow morning.”

She was sitting forward with a tense and eager look upon her face and her hands clenched tightly in her lap.

“There is no need for that.  Make your home with us, Stella, for a little while and hold your head high.”

Jane Repton had talked over this proposal with her husband.  Both of them recognised that the acceptance of it would entail on them some little sacrifice.  Prejudice would be difficult.  But they had thrust these considerations aside in the loyalty of their friendship and Jane Repton was a little hurt that Stella waved away their invitation without ceremony.

“I can’t.  I can’t,” she said irritably.  “Don’t try to stop me.”

Her nerves were quite on edge and she spoke with a greater violence than she knew.  Jane Repton tried to persuade her.

“Wouldn’t it be wiser for you to face things here, even though it means some effort and pain?”

“I don’t know,” answered Stella, still in the quick peremptory tone of one who will not be argued with.  “I don’t care either.  I have nothing to do with wisdom just now.  I don’t want people at all.  I want—­oh, how I want—­” She stopped and then she added vaguely:  “Something else,” and her voice trailed away into silence.  She sat without a word, all tingling impatience, during the rest of that drive and continued so to sit after the carriage had stopped.  When Jane Repton descended, and she woke up with a start and looked at the house, it was as though she brought her eyes down from heaven to earth.  Once within the house she went straight up to Repton.  He had left his wife behind with Stella at the Law Courts and had come home in advance of them.  He had not spoken a word to Stella that day, and he had not the time now, for she began immediately in an eager voice and a look of fever in her eyes: 

“You won’t try to stop me, will you?  I must go away to-morrow.”

Repton used more tact now than his wife had done.  He took the troubled and excited woman’s hand and answered her very gently: 

“Of course, Stella.  You shall go when you like.”

“Oh, thank you,” she cried, and was freed to remember the debt which she owed to these good friends of hers.  “You must think me a brute, Jane!  I haven’t said a word to you about all your kindness.  But—­oh, you’ll think me ridiculous, when you know”—­and she began to laugh and to sob in one breath.  Stella Ballantyne had remained so sunk in apathy through all that long trial that her friends were relieved at her outburst of tears.  Jane Repton led her upstairs and put her to bed just as if she had been a child.

“There!  You can get up for dinner if you like, Stella, or stay where you are.  And if you’ll tell us what you want to do we’ll make the arrangements for you and not ask you a question.”

Jane Repton kissed her and left her alone; and it was while Stella was sleeping upstairs that Henry Thresk called at the house and was told that there was no news for him.