There were spasms of joy in her slender and somewhat wasted frame as
she leaned from time to time against his shoulder.
Arrived at the house, she was loth to have him leave her for even the time
required to take his horse to the stable.
"Come soon," she said--"come as quick as you can. I shall be at the
window. Look up when you reach the gate. Look at the window all the way
from the gate to the door."
In an instant, not even taking off her bonnet, she was sitting by the
window waiting for him to appear.
A man approached, walking behind the hedge of lilacs which bordered the
yard, and halted at the gate with an air of hesitation. She turned ghastly
white: retribution was upon her. It was Duvernois.
With that swift instinct of escape which sensitive and timorous creatures
possess, she glided out of the room, through the upper hall, down a back
stairway, into the garden behind the house, and so on to an orchard
already obscure in the twilight. Here she paused in her breathless flight,
and burst into one of her frequent coughs, which she vainly attempted to
smother.
"I was already dying," she groaned. "Ah, why could he not have given me
time to finish?"
From the orchard she could faintly see the road, and she now discovered
Leighton returning briskly toward the house.
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