Days rolled on--days of miserable uncertainty, which was scarcely removed by a missive from her noble sire, which informed her indeed of the triumph of his arms, but at the same time only casually mentioned that the head of the rival house of St. Aunay had received a blow from which he would never recover. Now, it was obvious that this might be interpreted in two ways--either that the young Count had been grievously wounded in body, or that the fortunes of his house had been seriously injured. The latter was undoubtedly the case; but was the former also true? In this state of things uncertainty became madness, and Mathilde felt herself almost driven to desperation. This, however, being a condition of mind hardly suitable to a Norman lady of rank, she determined not to give way to it, but to take measures to relieve her anxiety. She resolved that she would, if possible, leave the convent and obtain, somehow or other, tidings of the being whom she so tenderly loved. It was not, however, in those days, a very easy thing to leave convents just when you pleased. If you were rich and well born, you could enter these institutions with but little difficulty; but quitting them was a different question altogether. Nor do I believe Mathilde would have accomplished her purpose had she not chanced to have a great friend in a worthy person who carried on the trade of a washerwoman in the town, and was fortunate enough to have secured the convent {112}custom. Being devoted to the Guerre-à-mort family, and especially so to the young Baroness, this worthy woman agreed to smuggle her out of the convent in a large basket of dirty linen, in which pleasant manner she successfully carried out her project. Once free, the question which Mathilde naturally had to consider was, what should she do next? She had forgotten to settle this before leaving her late abode, and yet it was a question which must certainly be settled without delay. The poor washerwoman, who had incurred great peril by assisting the escape of an inmate of a religious house, dared not keep her a moment longer than she could avoid, and there was no one in the town to whom she could trust herself. Under these circumstances she thought that the best thing to be done was to wander forth into the country, and this she accordingly did, having made such alterations in her dress as appeared necessary to prevent her being recognised as something different from the peasant woman for whom she wished to pass. The police were not very efficient in those days, and there were no detectives to speak of, so that she was not likely to be discovered by such agency. Newspapers also had not yet begun, and the advertisement system was unknown; otherwise her escape might have been attended with greater difficulties than was actually the case. As it was, she walked away from Reading without anybody taking the slightest notice of her, and wandered for many miles perfectly unmolested.