Hyacinth had looked her last on them, and had spoken to them for the last time. She stood in her room now waiting until there should be a chance of leaving the hotel unnoticed, then it suddenly struck her how great would be the consternation on the morrow, when she was missed. What would Adrian do or say--he who loved her so dearly? She went to her little desk and wrote a note to him. She addressed it and left it on the toilet table of her room. Then she went quietly down-stairs. No one was about. She opened the great hall-door and went out. Some few people still lingered in the grounds; she was not noticed. She walked down the long carriage-drive, and then stood in the street of the little town, alone. She found her way to the station. A great, despairing cry was rising from her heart to her lips, but she stifled it, a faint strange sensation, as though life were leaving her, came over her. She nerved herself. "I must live until he is free," she said with stern determination--"then death will be welcome!" They were no idle words that she spoke; all that life held brightest, dearest, and best, was past for her. Her only hope was that she might reach Loadstone in time to save Claude. She knew how soon she would be missed, and how easily she might be tracked. Suppose that they sent or went to her room and found it empty, and then made inquiries and learned that she had taken a ticket for Ostend? They could not overtake the train, but they could telegraph to Ostend and stop her. In that case she would be too late to save Claude. The station was full of people. She saw a lad among them--he seemed to be about fifteen--and she went up to him. "Are you going to Ostend?" she asked. He doffed his hat and bowed. "I am going by this train," he replied. "Can I be of any service to the _Fraulein_?" "I am always nervous in a crowd," she said--"will you buy my ticket?" He took the money. He could not see her face, for it was veiled, but he could distinguish its white, rigid mystery, and, full of wonder, he complied with her request. In a short time he returned with the ticket. "Can I do anything else for you, _Fraulein_?" he asked. "No," she replied, thanking him; and all the way to Ostend, the lad mused over the half-hidden beauty of that face, and the dreary tones of the sad young voice. "There is some mystery," he said; and afterward, when he had read the papers, he knew what the mystery was. She was safely seated in the furthest corner of a second-class carriage at last, her heart beating so that each throb seemed to send a thrill of fiery pain through her. Would she be in time? The train was an express, and was considered an unusually fast one, but it seemed slow to her--so slow. Her heart beat fast and her pulse throbbed quickly. Her face burned as with a flaming fire.