Darvy obeyed orders, believing nevertheless that somebody's head was turned. She got herself ready, packed a carpet bag, had the thought to take her lady a cup of tea, exchanging a little private conference with her crony, the butler, while she made it, and ordered the cab. Then she and Lady Adela came down and entered it, neither of them having the slightest notion for what quarter of the wide world she was bound. "Where to?" asked John of Darvy, as she followed her mistress into the cab. "Where to, my lady?" demanded Darvy, in turn. "Anywhere. Tell him to drive on," responded Lady Adela. "Tell him to drive straight on," said Darvy to John. "Where can I go?--where shall I be safe?" thought Adela to herself, as they went along. "I wonder--I wonder if Sarah would take me in?" came the next thought. "They"--the "they" applying to the legal thief-catchers--"would never think of looking for me there. Sarah is angry with me, I know, but she won't refuse to hide me. Darvy, direct the man to Colonel Hope's." This last sensible injunction was a wonderful relief to Darvy's troubled mind. And to Colonel Hope's they went. Lady Sarah "took her in," and Adela hid herself away in the bedroom of her sister Frances. Truth to say, they were in much anxiety themselves, the colonel included, as to what trouble and exposure might not be falling upon Adela. They did not refuse to shelter her, but they let her know tacitly how utterly they condemned her conduct. Lady Sarah was coldly distant in manner; the colonel would not see her at all. Before the day was over--it was in the afternoon--Grace came to them with the truth--that Charles Cleveland was released and had gone to Netherleigh. Adela, perhaps not altogether entirely reassured about herself, said she would stay at the colonel's another night, if permitted: and she did so. That was the explanation of Adela's absence from home. She had left the house in fear; not voluntarily to quit it or her husband. Her husband, however, not knowing this, took the opposite view, and dwelt upon it as he walked away from Lord Acorn's in the summer sun. Not that, one way or the other, it would make any difference to him. Entering his house, Mr. Grubb went straight upstairs to his dressing-room, intending to change the coat he wore for a lighter one. The bedroom door came first. He opened that, intending to pass across it, when he came face to face with his wife. Just for a moment he was taken by surprise, having supposed the room to be empty. She had returned from Lady Sarah's, and was standing at the dressing-glass, doing something to her hair, her bonnet evidently just taken off. She wore a quiet dress of black silk--the one she had gone away in.