She began to count up the hours that must pass before she could receive any tidings, good or ill. To stay quietly in the house and wait for them!--you might as well have told a poor wretch to sit still and wait for the bursting of a mine. No rest--no rest. The very walls of the house seemed to press upon her and hem her in. She saw a bonnet and shawl hanging up in the hall, caught both, and ran out at the front door. Out--out under the stars. She walked with her face lifted right up to them, her eyes flashing out an insane defiance to their merciless calm. The rain fell down thick, and it was very cold, but she never thought of putting on the bonnet or the shawl; or, if she thought at all, it was with a sort of longing that the rain might come and cool her through and through, or the sharp wind pierce to her breast and kill her. Once she had a thought of running a mile or two across the hills, and leaping from some cliffs into the sea; so that, whichever way this suspense ended, she might be safely dead beforehand--dead, too, in the same ocean, washed by the same wave. All the foolish Romeo-and-Juliet-like traditions of people killing themselves on some beloved's tomb, seemed to her now perfectly real, possible, and natural. Nothing was unnatural or impossible--save living. How to live, even for a day, an hour, in this horrible, deathly stagnation, she did not know. At last, walking on blindly through the night, she came to the termination of the Thornhurst estate. Was she to go back and lull herself into the stupor of patience?--to be kissed and wept over, and preached resignation to?--left to sit mutely in that quiet house, while he was dashed about, fighting with the sea for life?--or watching the clock's travelling round hour after hour, not knowing but that every peaceful minute might be the terrible one in which he died? “No,” she said to herself, while the awful but delirious joy which has struck many in a similar position, struck her suddenly, “he is not dead. If he had died, he would have told me--me whom he so loved He could not die anywhere, or at any time, but in some way or other I should certainly have known it.” And as she stood in the dark road--quite alone with the hills and stars, calmed down into a supernatural awe, Agatha almost expected to see her husband stand before her in the old familiar likeness. She would not have been afraid. But no apparition came. All nature, visible and invisible, was silent to her misery. If she went back to the house, all there would be silent too. She took her resolution--though it could hardly be called a resolution, being merely the blind impulse of despair. She climbed over the gate--she had not wit enough to unfasten it--and ran, swift and silent as some wild animal, along the road to Kingcombe.