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    lady's seclusion."

    "You see the necessity for it. However, we do not wish any talk on the
    subject."

    Slowly it came to Sophy's comprehension that she had been treated like
    an insane woman, and her anger, though quiet, was of that kind that
    means action of some sort. She went to her room, but it was only to
    recall the wrong upon wrong, the insult upon insult she had received.

    "I will go away from it all," she said. "I will go away until Archie
    returns. I will not sleep another night under the same roof with that
    wicked woman. I will stay away till I die, ere I will do it."

    Usually she had little strength for much movement, but at this hour she
    felt no physical weakness. She made Leslie bring her a street costume
    of brown cloth, and she carefully put into her purse all the money she
    had. Then she ordered the carriage and rode as far as her aunt
    Kilgour's. "Come for me in an hour, Thomas," she said, and then she
    entered the shop.

    "Aunt, I am come back to you. Will you let me stay with you till Archie
    gets home? I can bide yon dreadful old woman no longer."

    "Meaning Madame Braelands?"

    "She is just beyond all things. This morning she has kept a letter that
    Archie wrote me; and she has told me a lot of lies in its place. I'm
    not able to thole her another hour."

    "I'll tell you what, Sophy, Madame was here since I saw you, and she
    says you are neither to be guided nor endured I don't know who to
    believe."

    "Oh! aunt, aunt, you know well I wouldn't tell you a lie. I am so
    miserable! For God's sake, take me in!"

    "I'd like to, Sophy, but I'm not free to do so."

    "You're putting Madame's bit of siller and the work she's promised you
    from the Glamis girl before my heart-break. Oh, how can you?"

    "Sophy, you have lived with me, and I saw you often dissatisfied and
    unreasonable for nothing at all."

    "I was a bit foolish lassie then. I am a poor, miserable, sick woman
    now."

    "You have no need to be poor, and miserable, and sick. I won't
    encourage you to run away from your home and your duty. At any rate,
    bide where you are till your husband comes back. I would be wicked to
    give you any other advice."

    "You mean that you won't let me come and stay with you?"

    "No, I won't. I would be your worst enemy if I did."

    "Then good-bye. You will maybe be sorry some day for the 'No' you have
    just said."

    She went slowly out of the store, and Griselda was very unhappy, and
    called to her to come back and wait for her carriage. She did not heed
    or answer, but walked with evident purpose down a certain street. It
    led her to the railway station, and she went in and took a ticket for
    Edinburgh. She had hardly done so when the train came thundering into
    the station, she stepped into it, and in a few minutes was flying at
    express rate to her destination. She had relatives in Edinburgh, and
    she thought she knew their dwelling place, having called on them with
    her Aunt Kilgour when they were in that city, just previous to her
    marriage. But she found that they had removed, and no one in the
    vicinity knew to what quarter of the town. She was too tired to pursue
    inquiries, or even to think any more that day, and she went to a hotel
    and tried to rest and sleep. In the morning she remembered that her
    mother's cousin, Jane Anderson, lived in Glasgow at some number in
    Monteith Row. The Row was not a long one, even if she had to go from
    house to house to find her relative. So she determined to go on to
    Glasgow.

    She felt ill, strangely ill; she was in a burning fever and did not
    know it. Yet she managed to get into the proper train, and to retain
    her consciousness for sometime afterwards, ere she succumbed to the
    inevitable consequences of her condition. Before the train reached its
    destination, however, she was in a desperate state, and the first
    action of the guard was to call a carriage and send her to a hospital.

    After this kindness had been done, Sophy was dead to herself and the
    world for nearly three weeks. She remembered nothing, she knew nothing,
    she spoke only in the most disconnected and puzzling manner. For her
    speech wandered between the homely fisher life of her childhood and the
    splendid social life of Braelands. Her personality was equally
    perplexing. The clothing she wore was of the finest quality; her rings,
    and brooch, and jewelled watch, indicated wealth and station; yet her
    speech, especially during the fever, was that of the people, and as she
    began to help herself, she had little natural actions that showed the
    want of early polite breeding. No letter or card, no name or address of
    any kind, was found on her person; she appeared to be as absolutely
    lost as a stone dropped into the deep sea.

    And when she came to herself and realised where she was, and found out
    from her attendant the circumstances under which she had been brought
    to the hospital, she was still more reticent. For her first thought
    related to the annoyance Archie would feel at her detention in a public
    hospital; her second, to the unmerciful use Madame would make of the
    circumstance. She could not reason very clearly, but her idea was to
    find her cousin and gain her protection, and then, from that more
    respectable covett, to write to her husband. She might admit her
    illness--indeed, she would be almost compelled to do that, for she had
    fallen away so much, and had had her hair cut short during the height
    of the fever--but Archie and Madame must not know that she had been in
    a public hospital. For fisher-people have a singular dislike to public
    charity of any kind; they help one another. And, to Sophy's
    intelligence, the hospital episode was a disgrace that not even her
    insensibility could quite excuse.

    Several weeks passed in that long, spotless, white room full of
    suffering, before Sophy was able to stand upon her feet, before indeed
    she began to realise the passage of time, and the consequences which
    must have followed her long absence and silence. But all her efforts at
    writing were failures. The thought she wished to express slipped off
    into darkness as soon as she tried to write it; her vision failed her,
    her hands failed her; she could only sink back upon her pillow and lie
    inert and almost indifferent for hours afterwards. And as the one
    letter she wished to write was to Archie, she could not depute it to
    any one else. Besides, the nurse would tell _where_ she was, and that
    was a circumstance she must at all hazards keep to herself. It had been
    hot July weather when she was first placed on her hard, weary bed of
    suffering, it was the end of September when she was able to leave the
    hospital. Her purse with its few sovereigns in it was returned to her,
    and the doctor told her kindly, if she had any friends in the world, to
    go at once to their care.

    "You have talked a great deal of the sea and the boats," he said; "get
    close to the sea if you can; it is perhaps the best and the only thing
    for you."

    She thanked him and answered: "I am going to the Fife coast. I have
    friends there, I think." She put out a little wasted hand, and he
    clasped it with a sigh.

    "So young, so pretty, so good," he said to the nurse, as they stood
    watching her walk very feebly and unsteadily away.

    "I will give her three months at the longest, if she has love and care.
    I will give her three weeks--nay, I will say three days, if she has to
    care for herself, or if any particular trouble come to her."

    Then they turned from the window, and Sophy hired a cab and went to
    Monteith Row to try and find her friends. She wanted to write to her
    husband and ask him to come for her. She thought she could do this best
    from her cousin's home. "I will give her a bonnie ring or two, and I
    will tell her the whole truth, and she will be sure to stand by me, for
    there is nothing wrong to stand by, and blood is aye thicker than
    water." And then her thoughts wandered on to a contingency that brought
    a flush of pain to her cheeks. "Besides, maybe Archie might have an ill
    thought put into his head, and then the doctors and nurses in the
    hospital could tell him what would make all clear." She went through
    many of the houses, inquiring for Ellen Montgomery, but could not find
    her, and she was finally obliged to go to a hotel and rest. "I will
    take the lave of the houses in the morning," she thought, "it is aye
    the last thing that is the right thing; everybody finds that out."

    That evening, however, something happened which changed all her ideas
    and intentions. She went into the hotel parlour and sat down; there
    were some newspapers on the table, and she lifted one. It was an
    Edinburgh paper, but the first words her eyes fell on was her husband's
    name. Her heart leaped up at the sight of it, and she read the
    paragraph. Then the paper dropped from her hands. She felt that she was
    going to faint, and by a supreme effort of will she recalled her senses
    and compelled them to stay and suffer with her. Again, and then again,
    she read the paragraph, unable at first to believe what she did read,
    for it was a notice, signed by her husband, advising the world in
    general that she had voluntarily left his home, and that he would no
    longer be responsible for any debt she might contract in his name. To
    her childlike, ignorant nature, this public exposure of her was a final
    act. She felt that it was all the same as a decree of divorce. "Archie
    had cast her off; Madame had at last parted them." For an hour she sat
    still in a very stupour of despair.

    "But something might yet be done; yes, something must be done. She
    would go instantly to Fife; she would tell Archie everything. He could
    not blame her for being sick and beyond reason or knowledge. The
    doctors and nurses of the hospital would certify to the truth of all
    she said." Ah! she had only to look in a mirror to know that her own
    wasted face and form would have been testimony enough.

    That night she could not move, she had done all that it was possible
    for her to do that day; but on the morrow she would be rested and she
    might trust herself to the noise and bustle of the street and railway.
    The day was well on before she found strength to do this; but at length
    she found herself on the direct road to Largo, though she could hardly
    tell how it had been managed. As she approached the long chain of Fife
    fishing-villages, she bought the newspaper most widely read in them;
    and, to her terror and shame, found the same warning to honest folk
    against her. She was heartsick. With this barrier between Archie and
    herself, how could she go to Braelands? How could she face Madame? What
    mockery would be made of her explanations? No, she must see Archie
    alone. She must tell him the whole truth, somewhere beyond Madame's
    contradiction and influence. Whom should she go to? Her aunt Kilgour
    had turned her away, even before this disgrace. Her cousin Isobel's
    husband

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