" She took out the
cork, and threw the laudanum out of window, and the empty bottle after
it. "Let us try to forget this dreadful discovery for the present," she
resumed; "let us go downstairs at once. All that I have now to say to
you can be said in another room."
She helped him to rise from the chair, and took his arm in her own.
"It is well for him; it is well for me," she thought, as they went
downstairs together, "that I came when I did."
On crossing the passage, she stepped to the front door, where the
carriage was waiting which had brought her from Dumfries, and instructed
the coachman to put up his horses at the nearest inn, and to call again
for her in two hours' time. This done, she accompanied Noel Vanstone
into the sitting-room, stirred up the fire, and placed him before it
comfortably in an easy-chair. He sat for a few minutes, warming his
hands feebly like an old man, and staring straight into the flame. Then
he spoke.
"When the woman came and threatened me in Vauxhall Walk," he began,
still staring into the fire, "you came back to the parlor after she was
gone, and you told me--?" He stopped, shivered a little, and lost the
thread of his recollections at that point.
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