She remembered all her sweet love-dream in these brief moments;
remembered John Temple standing with her in the moonlit garden of
Woodside; remembered his looks, the touch of his dear hand! And it had
been all folly! He, the husband of another woman, must have known she
could never be his wife. He had been amusing himself; she had been his
plaything; what else could she be now?
"I can but die," she thought; "I could not live without him--I will
die, and then he will know I loved him to the end."
She rose and tottered to her feet. She felt a great bodily weakness as
though every nerve were unstrung. The restorative the doctor had left
was standing on the table, and she drank some of this, and it seemed to
give her strength. Her hat was lying near her, and she put it on and
tried to walk feebly across the room. She had no plans, but somehow she
thought of the river gliding through the great city, and hiding dark
sin and sorrow beneath its murky flood.
"It would hide me," she murmured; "hide my shame forever."
She opened the room door and went out on the corridor, and then walked
feebly down the broad staircase. No one stopped her or interfered with
her, and in a few moments she reached the hall. One of the servants
here came forward and asked her if she required a cab. But she shook
her head, and went down the steps into the lighted streets, alone with
her broken heart.
CHAPTER XXXII.
DESPAIR.
The noise and glare outside almost overwhelmed May as she went
tottering feebly on. She knew not which way to turn, and felt that her
weary feet would not bear her much farther. She stopped and looked
half-dazed around. And as she did so a lamplight fell on her white and
haggard face, showing it plainly to a man who was just about to pass
her when she paused. This was Ralph Webster, but he did not recognize
her. This pale-faced, miserable looking woman, whose features somehow
reminded him of the beautiful, blooming girl he had seen last night at
his aunt's house, however, interested him. He, too, stopped after he
had passed her, and looked back. She was beckoning for a cab, and a
moment later one drew up.
The driver bent forward and asked her where she wished to go. The woman
Webster was watching hesitated, got slowly into the cab, and then he
heard her voice. He started; it was the voice of May, and the words she
uttered sounded strange and ominous to his ears.
"Take me to one of the bridges," she said.
"Which one, miss?" inquired the driver.
Once more there was a pause before the answer came. Then again he heard
May's voice.
"Westminster," she said, and in an instant--swift as a flash of
lightning--it darted across Ralph Webster's acute brain that this
actually might be May Churchill; that she might have learned the secret
of which he was but too sure!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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