Nevertheless, she hesitated; she might be heard, or presently missed and pursued; and the vengeance incurred by such a detection of her suspicions and ill opinion, might provoke her immediate destruction. It might be better, therefore, to return; to rise only when called; to pay them another half-crown; and then publicly depart.
Accidentally, while thus deliberating, she touched the handle of a large wicker-basket, and found that it was wet: she held out her hand to the light, and saw that it was besmeared with blood.
She turned sick; she nearly fainted; she shrunk from her hand with horrour; yet strove to recover her courage, by ejaculating a fervent prayer.
To re-enter the house voluntarily, was now impossible; she shuddered at the idea of again encountering her dreaded hosts, and resolved upon a flight, at all risks, from so fearful a dwelling.
She made her way through the enclosure; crossed the briery gate, and, rushing past whatever had the appearance of already trodden ground, dived into a wood; where, trampling down thorns, brambles, and nettles, now braving, now unconscious of their stings, she continued her rapid course, till she came within view of a small cottage. There she stopt; not for repose; her troubled mind kept her body still insensible to weariness; but to ponder upon her dreadful suspicions.
Not a moment was requisite to satisfy her upright reason, that to discover what she had seen, and what she surmised, was an immediate duty to the community, if, by such a discovery, the community might be served; however repugnant the measure might be to female delicacy; however cruel to the pleadings of compassion for the children of the house; and however adverse to her feelings, to denounce what she could not have detected, but from seeking, and finding, a personal asylum in distress.
Yet who was she who must give such information? Anonymous accusation might be neglected as calumnious; yet how name herself as belonging to the noble family from which she sprung, but by which she was unacknowledged? How, too, at a moment when concealment appeared to her to be existence, come forward, a volunteer to public notice? Small as ought to be the weight given to a consideration merely selfish, if opposing the rights of general security; neither law, she thought, nor equity, demanded the sacrifice of private and bosom feelings, for an evil already irremediable, where, while the denunciation would be unavailing, the denunciator must be undone.