They had searched their hearts to find what was the best to do in this terrible emergency, and being at one on the point they did it. The time in which to decide was short, and they did not know the whole extent of the woe about which they were, as it were, legislating. Perhaps they tacitly agreed that the nature which had endured so long could endure till to-morrow morning. They knew not what were the principal factors in the sum of the events, in the midst of which they found themselves without a moment’s warning. Those factors were despair, and the promptings of a heart which had literally had all life and all reason ground out of it by seven months of perfect wretchedness. Eleanor slept little that night, and waited with sickening anxiety for nine o’clock. It came, but brought not Ada with it. Half-past nine; yea, ten had struck, and she came not. Thrilling with uneasiness, Eleanor knew not what to do. She feared by making inquiries to excite suspicion. Unhappy and uncertain, she waited till about half-past ten. Michael called, and, without sitting down, just told her not to make herself more uneasy than was necessary, but that he had been at Mr. Dixon’s, intending to appoint a meeting with him on his return. His assistant said he had had a letter from him, deferring his return till the following day, and that the maid had told him that Miss Dixon had gone out, and up the town, without waiting for any breakfast. Eleanor felt her heart in her mouth. ‘Has she gone out to kill herself?’ she whispered.1 ‘I do not think so,’ said Michael. ‘She cannot have wandered very far. You shall have news as soon as I can send it. There is only one road out of this end of the town, and I am riding that way. Good morning.’ So she was left alone, with the conviction that Michael himself was far more disturbed than he chose to tell her. Fears and terrors loomed up like giant shadows in the background of her mind, and so she passed the most terrible day of her life. CHAPTER XXXVIII ADA Ada had gone home, after leaving the Dower House. The maid had told Michael that Miss Dixon had gone out about eight o’clock, in her bonnet and shawl, without any breakfast, and that she had had nothing to eat after her arrival at home. She had never, indeed, taken her things off; but was in exactly the same dress she had worn on her journey to Bradstane, which had been a long and fatiguing one. On going home from her interview with Eleanor, she went upstairs, partly in mechanical obedience to a remembered mandate of Miss Askam’s, partly automatically.