"There is one place," said Dudleigh, and then hesitated. Edith said nothing. There was anguish in her face and in her heart.
"It is hidden among the trees. Do you know it? It is away from all observation."
Edith bowed her head. She knew it well. It was off the main avenue--not far away from the Hall.
"Can you get out of the house after dark?" said Dudleigh, in a feverish whisper. "It must be after dark, and we must be unobserved. For if Wiggins were to see us he would come as your guardian, and take you back, and shut you up--perhaps for life."
This suggestion about Wiggins chimed in with Edith's own fears. It made her desperate. The marriage seemed less abhorrent; it was eclipsed by the horrors of imprisonment for life. Discovery now--after that last threat of his--would bring a closer restraint, stricter imprisonment, the loss of all hope.
"There is a private door at the east end--"
"I can get out through that. No one will think of my leaving the Hall after dark."
"To-morrow evening," said Dudleigh, "at ten o'clock. It will be dark then. Will you meet me?"
"I shall only hope, then," said he, "that no new restraint may be imposed upon you to prevent your coming. And now I will go--to meet you to-morrow."
He seized her hand in his icy grasp, wrung it convulsively, and bowing with his pallid face, walked quickly away.
There was a weight on Edith's heart; but in spite of this, Dudleigh's last look, his agitated manner, and his deep love filled her with pity, and made her anxious to carry out her act of self-sacrifice for so dear and so true a friend.
The chapel referred to was a sombre edifice over the graves of the Daltons. Beneath it were the vaults where reposed the remains of Edith's ancestors. The chapel was used for the celebration of burial rites. It was in this place that the marriage was to take place. Edith, in her gloom, thought the place an appropriate one. Let the marriage be there, she thought--in that place where never anything but burials has been known before. Could she have changed the one service into the other, she would have done so.
And yet she would not go back, for it was the least of two evils. The other alternative was captivity under the iron hand of Wiggins--Wiggins the adventurer, the forger, the betrayer of her father, whose power over herself was a perpetual insult to that father's memory--a thing intolerable, a thing of horror. Why should she not give herself to the man who loved her, even if her own love was wanting, when such an act would free her from so accursed a tyranny?