"To-morrow night," he answered. And then, leaning forward, and speaking
lightly but in a low voice, he went on, "It is a simple matter. All you
have to do is to find a lodging and begone from here by sunset, leaving
the door on the latch. No more; for the money it shall be paid to you,
half to-night and half the day after to-morrow."

"I want no money," she said.

"No money?" he exclaimed incredulously.

"No, no money," she answered, in a tone and with a look that silenced
him.

"But you will do it?" he said, almost with timidity.

"I will do it," she answered. "At sunset to-morrow you will find the
door on the latch and the house empty. After that see that you do your
part!"

His eyes lightened. "Have no fear," he said grimly. "But mark one thing,
mistress," he continued. "It is an odd thing to do for nothing."

"That is my business!" she cried, with a flash of rage.

He had been about to warn her that during the next twenty-four hours she
would be watched, and that on the least sign of a message passing
between her and those in authority the plot would be abandoned. But at
that look he held his peace, said curtly that it was a bargain then;
and in a twinkling he was gone, leaving her--leaving her alone with her
secret.

Yet for a time it was not of that or of her vengeance that she thought.
Her mind was busy with the years of solitude and estrangement she had
passed in that house and that room; with the depression that little by
little had sapped her husband's strength and hope, with the slow decay
of their goods, their cheerfulness, even the artistic joys that had at
first upheld them; with the aloofness that had doomed her and her child
to a dreary existence; with this last great wrong.

"Yes, let it be! let it be!" she cried. In fancy she saw the town lie
below her--as she had often seen it with the actual eye from the
ramparts--she saw the clustering mass of warm red roofs and walls, the
outlying towers, the church, the one long straight street; and with
outstretched arm she doomed it--doomed it with a vengeful sense of the
righteousness of the sentence.

Yet, strange to say, that which was uppermost in her mind and steeled
her soul and justified the worst, was not the last thing of which she
had to complain--her daughter's wrong--but the long years of loneliness,
the hundred, nay, the thousand, petty slights of the past, bearable at
the time and in detail, but intolerable in the retrospect now hope