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ent to pay for both the steamer journey and her railway ticket to Ballycroghan. The first thing, therefore, to be done was to leave the College as early and as secretly as she could. She did not dare to go to sleep, but lay tossing uneasily until the first hint of dawn. Sunrise was at about four o'clock, so soon after half-past three it was just light enough to enable her to get up and dress. Miss Maitland had sent a glass of milk and a plate of sandwiches and biscuits for her supper the night before, but she had left them untouched on her dressing-table. Now, however, she had the forethought to drink the milk and put the biscuits and sandwiches in her pocket. The face which confronted her when she looked in the glass hardly seemed her own, it was so unwontedly pale, and had such dark rings round the eyes. She moved very quietly, for she was anxious not to waken her room-mate. "Janie mustn't know what I intend, or she'll get into trouble for not stopping me," she thought. "It's a comfort that she, at any rate, doesn't believe I've done this horrible thing, and that she'll stand up for me when I'm gone." She listened for a minute, till the sound of her friend's even and regular breathing reassured her; then, drawing aside the curtain, she crept into the next cubicle. Janie was lying fast asleep, her head cradled on her arm. With her fair hair falling round her cheeks, she looked almost pretty. Honor bent down and kissed the end of one of the flaxen locks, but too gently to disturb its owner; then, with a scarcely breathed good-bye, she left the room. She had laid her plans carefully, and did not mean to be discovered and brought back to school; so, instead of going downstairs, and thus passing both Vivian Holmes's and Miss Maitland's doors, she went to the other end of the passage, where the landing window stood wide open, and, managing to climb down by the thick ivy, reached the ground without mishap. She crept through the garden under the laurel bushes, and, avoiding the cricket field, scaled the wall close to the potting shed, helped very much by a large heap of logs that had been left there ready to be chopped. Once successfully over, she set off running in the direction of the moors, and never stopped until she was quite out of sight of even the chimneys of St. Chad's. Then, hot and utterly breathless, she sat down on the grass to rest. It was still very early, for the sun had only just risen. The air was f
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