I dared not think of home, for (Nessy MacLeod and Aunt Bridget apart) the house of my father was the last place I could fly to at a moment when I was making dust and ashes of his lifelong expectations.

Neither dared I think of Sunny Lodge, although I remembered, with a tug of tenderness, Christian Ann’s last message about Mary O’Neill’s little room that was always waiting for me—­for I thought of how I had broken my pledge to her.

The only place I could think of was that which Martin had mentioned when he wished to carry me away—­London.  In the mighty world of London I might hide myself from observation and wait until Martin returned from his expedition.

“Yes, yes, London,” I told myself in my breathless excitement, little knowing what London meant.

I began to select the clothes I was to carry with me and to wear on my journey.  They must be plain, for I had to escape from a house in which unfriendly eyes would be watching me.  They must be durable, for during my time of waiting I expected to be poor.

I hunted out some of the quaker-like costumes which had been made for me before my marriage; and when I had put them on I saw that they made a certain deduction from my appearance, but that did not matter to me now—­the only eyes I wished to look well in being down in the Antarctic seas.

Then I tried to think of practical matters—­how I was to live in London and how, in particular, I was to meet the situation that was before me.  Surely never did a more helpless innocent confront such a serious problem.  I was a woman, and for more than a year I had been a wife, but I had no more experience of the hard facts of material existence than a child.

I thought first of the bank-book which my father had sent me with authority to draw on his account.  But it was then nine o’clock, the banks were closed for the day, and I knew enough of the world to see that if I attempted to cash a cheque in the morning my whereabouts would he traced.  That must never happen, I must hide myself from everybody; therefore my bank-book was useless.

“Quite useless,” I thought, throwing it aside like so much waste paper.

I thought next of my jewels.  But there I encountered a similar difficulty.  The jewels which were really mine, having been bought by myself, had been gambled away by my husband at Monte Carlo.  What remained were the family jewels which had come to me as Lady Raa; but that was a name I was never more to bear, a person I was never more to think about, so I could not permit myself to take anything that belonged to her.

The only thing left to me was my money.  I had always kept a good deal of it about me, although the only use I had had for it was to put it in the plate at church, and to scatter it with foolish prodigality to the boys who tossed somersaults behind the carriage in the road.

Now I found it all over my room—­in my purse, in various drawers, and on the toilet-tray under my dressing-glass.  Gathered together it counted up to twenty-eight pounds.  I owed four pounds to Price, and having set them aside, I saw that I had twenty-four pounds left in notes, gold, and silver.