She landed on the beach at Arcachon--penniless, but with a diamond ring on her wedding finger--her engagement ring--which she knew, by a careless admission of Martin Disney’s, to have cost fifty pounds. She left the milliner, and went into the little town, dreading to meet Lostwithiel at every step. She found a complacent jeweller who was willing to advance twenty-five Napoleons upon the ring, and promised to return it to her on the receipt of that sum, with only a bagatelle of twenty francs for interest, since Madame would redeem her pledge almost immediately. Furnished with this money she drove straight to the station, and waited there in the most obscure corner she could find till the first train left for Bordeaux. At Bordeaux she had a long time to wait, still in hiding, before the express left for Paris--and then came the long, lonely journey--from Bordeaux to Paris--from Paris to London--from London to Trelasco. It seemed an endless pilgrimage, a nightmare dream of dark night and wintry day, made hideous by the ceaseless throb of the engine, the perpetual odour of sulphur and smoke. She reached Trelasco somehow, and sank exhausted in Tabitha’s arms. “What day is it?” she asked faintly, looking round the familiar room, as if she had never seen it before. “Thursday, ma’am. You have been away ten days,” the old servant answered coldly. It was only the next day that Tabitha told her mistress she must leave her. “There is no need to talk about what has happened,” she said. “I have kept your secret. I have let no one know that you were away. I packed Susan off for a holiday the morning after the ball. I don’t believe any one knows anything about you--unless you were seen yesterday on your way home.” Then came stern words of renunciation, a conscientious but rather narrow-minded woman’s protest against sin. CHAPTER XXIX. “I, YOU, AND GOD CAN COMPREHEND EACH OTHER.” It was two months after Allegra’s wedding-day, and Martin Disney had been warned that the closing hour of the young life he had watched so tenderly was not far off. It might come to-morrow; or it might not come for a week; or the lingering flame might go flickering on, fainting and reviving in the socket, for another month. He must hold himself prepared for the worst. Death might come suddenly at the last, like a thief in the night; or by stealthy, gradual steps, and slowest progress from life to clay. He sat beside Isola’s sofa in the Roman lodging as he had sat beside her bed in that long illness at Trelasco, when her wandering mind appalled him more than her bodily weakness. He watched as faithfully as he had watched then, but this time without hope.