CHAPTER THE SECOND.

To Southampton.

There was not a moment to be lost.  When the servant came downstairs again from her room in the attics, she would be sure to call for the tea-tray, in order to save herself another journey; how long she would be up-stairs was quite uncertain.  If she was gone to “clean” herself, as she called it, the process might be a very long one, and a good hour might be at my disposal; but I could not count upon that.  In the drawing-room below sat my jailer and enemy, who might take a whim into her head, and come up to see her prisoner at any instant.  It was necessary to be very quick, very decisive, and very silent.

I had been on the alert for such a chance ever since my imprisonment began.  My seal-skin hat and jacket lay ready to my hand in a drawer; but I could find no gloves; I could not wait for gloves.  Already there were ominous sounds overhead, as if the servant had dispatched her brief business there, and was about to come down.  I had not time to put on thicker boots; and it was perhaps essential to the success of my flight to steal down the stairs in the soft, velvet slippers I was wearing.  I stepped as lightly as I could—­lightly but very swiftly, for the servant was at the top of the upper flight, while I had two to descend.  I crept past the drawing-room door.  The heavy house-door opened with a grating of the hinges; but I stood outside it, in the shelter of the portico; free, but with the rain and wind of a stormy night in October beating against me, and with no light save the glimmer of the feeble street-lamps flickering across the wet pavement.

I knew very well that my escape was almost hopeless, for the success of it depended very much upon which road of the three lying before me I should happen to take.  I had no idea of the direction of any one of them, for I had never been out of the house since the night I was brought to it.  The strong, quick running of the servant, and the passionate fury of the woman, would overtake me if we were to have a long race; and if they overtook me they would force me back.  I had no right to seek freedom in this wild way, yet it was the only way.  Even while I hesitated in the portico of the house that ought to have been my home, I heard the shrill scream of the girl within when she found my door open, and my room empty.  If I did not decide instantaneously, and decide aright, it would have been better for me never to have tried this chance of escape.

But I did not linger another moment.  I could almost believe an angel took me by the hand, and led me.  I darted straight across the muddy road, getting my thin slippers wet through at once, ran for a few yards, and then turned sharply round a corner into a street at the end of which I saw the cheery light of shop-windows, all in a glow in spite of the rain.  On I fled breathlessly, unhindered by any