This was in the passage, and with Mrs. Erps in waiting at the front door rehearsing in her mind: "As I was telling you when you come, doctor, 'Excoose me,' I says to 'er, 'excoose me--'" But what Mrs. Erps overheard caused her to let him escape and to say instead to Miss Oxford, "Oh, the pore love! If any one makes a sahnd to shock 'er--not if I knows it, they don't."
Mrs. Erps knew quite well the meaning of that recurrent "it" in the doctor's words.
But it was not in Mrs. Erps's power to prevent the shock that came.
It came in direct train of action from that "Yes, Roly" that Maggie had heard, separated from it by the days of high fever, the mind wandering, that almost immediately supervened. As one that falls asleep upon a resolution and wakes at once to remember it and to act upon it, so, the fever releasing her to her senses, Audrey took up immediately that which lay in those words of hers.
She had fallen into a natural sleep that promised the end of her fever. She awoke, and directly she awoke sat up in bed. She was alone. Only the one thought was in her mind; she got up and began to dress.
The resolution of her mind governed the extreme weakness of her body. She was no more aware of her feebleness than one strung up in battle notices a wound not immediately crippling. She knew exactly what she must do. She found her purse on the mantelpiece and took it and left the house without being noticed--or thinking to escape or to give notice. Only that one thought occupied her; a few yards down the street she met a cab and hailed it. "Burdon House, Mount Street," she directed the driver.
"Yes, Roly," had been when Roly, visiting her more clearly, more real than any other figure about her during that numb and impassive period when she desired to be quiet in order to talk with him, had told her to go to Gran, to comfort Gran, and to be comforted.
Old butler Noble admitted her. Events had caused old butler Noble to be considerably shaken in his wits. A week ago the door would have been closed to a young woman who asked for Lady Burdon and refused her name. To-day, on the explanation, "The name does not matter. Lady Burdon will be glad to see me," it was held open and the visitor taken to the library.