Then a sudden flood of light seemed to pour through Innocent’s darkened mind. The horror which she had felt vaguely took shape and form. Heaven help the child! She had done it! She gave a low wild cry, and looked round her with a despairing appeal to heaven and earth. Was there no one to protect her--no one to help her? One moment she paused, miserable, bewildered, then turned and fled out of the awful room, where so much had befallen her. What could she do? where could she go? She fled as an animal flies to its cover--to its home, unreasoning, unthinking. Frederick would have represented that home to her in any other circumstances; but she had killed Frederick’s wife. This horror seemed to take form and pursue her. The maids were all gone: one to call the unhappy father, one to the husband, another to watch for the doctor; this last had left the door open, through which another blast of night-air swept through the house. Down the narrow staircase poor Innocent fled noiseless, like a thief. Upon a table in the passage lay her hat as she had thrown it off when she came in that afternoon with Frederick, and the warm wrap in which Miss Vane had enveloped her when they started, so peacefully, so happily, for their drive. Was it only that morning? The High Lodge, and its orderly life and its calm inhabitants, seemed to Innocent like things she had known ages ago; older even than Pisa and Niccolo--almost beyond the range of memory. She stole out at the open door, drawing Miss Vane’s great shawl round her, and for a moment feeling comforted in the chill of her misery by its warmth. For one second she stood on the step, with the moonlight on her face, wondering where she was to go. The maid who was watching for the doctor saw her, and cried out with terror, thinking her a ghost. Then a sudden cloud came over the moon, and in that shelter, like a guilty thing, Innocent stole away. She did not know where to go. She wandered on through the dark and still village streets to the great Minster, with some vain childish imagination of taking refuge there. But here chance befriended the unhappy girl, or some kind angel guided her. The railway was close by, with some lights yet unextinguished. Vaguely feeling that by that was the only way home, she stole into the station, with some notion of hiding herself till she could get away. The express train to town, which stopped at Sterborne, though poor Innocent knew nothing of it, was late that night. It had just arrived when she got in. The little station was badly lighted, the officials sleepy and careless. By instinct Innocent crept into an empty carriage, not knowing even that it was going on, and in five minutes more was carried, unconscious, wrapt in a tragic stupor of woe and terror, away from the scene of this terrible crisis of her life.