"In the morning when he comes out into the garden," she said, "he will find my poor, crushed, bleeding body lying beneath this window. Surely, then, when his murderous hate has driven me to self-destruction, his revenge will be complete!" She placed her hand on the sill of the window, and leaned forward for the fatal spring that was to end her earthly sorrows. How slight a thing can distract our attention even in the most absorbing moments of our lives. Queenie's hands fell upon a cold, wet mass of leaves, and a gust of intoxicating perfume blew into her face. She immediately drew back. She had suddenly remembered that some thickly twisted vines of ivy and sweet-scented honeysuckle were trained up to her window in the second story. A thought, as sudden as an inspiration, darted into her mind. Instead of dashing her brains out on the hard ground below, why not escape down this ladder of vines to love and happiness again? "I will do it," she said to herself. "I will go back to my husband. I will tell him I was stolen from my grave, and that I revived in the fresh air, and life came back to me in its full tide. Oh! how glad he will be to see me--my poor Lawrence. He loved me so dearly!" In the swift revulsion of feeling from despair and desperation to love and hope again she gave way to a burst of hysterical tears. "I must not stay here to weep," she said, at length, brushing the crystal drops away from her cheeks. "I must be far on my way to my husband before he discovers my escape." She took up the thick, hooded waterproof cloak that lay on a chair, and wrapped it around her. "This will never do," she said, seeing the long train of her splendid dress sweeping from beneath the hem of the cloak. "I must not be seen going into the city in this plight." She took off the cloak and tucked up the long train and pinned it securely around her, resumed the waterproof, and climbed up into the window. "Farewell, Leon Vinton," she said. "Pray God I may never look on your evil face again!" She took a firm hold of the thick body of the vine with both hands, and with a slight shudder swung herself forward into the darkness. The vine swayed and creaked with her weight, and for one dreadful moment she thought she should be precipitated to the ground to the death which a moment before she had courted, but which now, in the new dawn of hope, she shunned. The shower of rain-drops, shaken down from the leaves into her face, almost took her breath away. The wild wind tossed her from side to side like a feather as she clung to her frail support. "I shall surely be killed," she said to herself in terror.