"Clorinda!Clorinda!"Anne cried,running to her and kneeling at her side."Clorinda!God have mercy!What is't?"Never before had her face worn such a look--'twas colourless,and so drawn and fallen in that 'twas indeed almost as if all her great beauty was gone;but the thing most awful to poor Anne was that all the new softness seemed as if it had been stamped out,and the fierce hardness had come back and was engraven in its place,mingled with a horrible despair.
"An hour ago,"she said,"I swooned.That is why I look thus.'Tis yet another sign that I am a woman--a woman!""You are ill--you swooned?"cried Anne."I must send for your physician.Have you not ordered that he be sent for yourself?If Osmonde were here,how perturbed he would be!""Osmonde!"said my lady."Gerald!Is there a Gerald,Anne?""Sister!"cried Anne,affrighted by her strange look--"oh,sister!""I have seen heaven,"Clorinda said;"I have stood on the threshold and seen through the part-opened gate--and then have been dragged back to hell."Anne clung to her,gazing upwards at her eyes,in sheer despair.
"But back to hell I will not go,"she went on saying."Had I not seen Heaven,they might perhaps have dragged me;but now I will not go--I will not,that I swear!There is a thing which cannot be endured.Bear it no woman should.Even I,who was not born a woman,but a wolf's she-cub,I cannot.'Twas not I,'twas Fate,"she said--"'twas not I,'twas Fate--'twas the great wheel we are bound to,which goes round and round that we may be broken on it.
'Twas not I who bound myself there;and I will not be broken so."She said the words through her clenched teeth,and with all the mad passion of her most lawless years;even at Anne she looked almost in the old ungentle fashion,as though half scorning all weaker than herself,and having small patience with them.
"There will be a way,"she said--"there will be a way.I shall not swoon again."She left her divan and stood upright,the colour having come back to her face;but the look Anne worshipped not having returned with it,'twas as though Mistress Clorinda Wildairs had been born again.
"To-morrow morning I go forth on Devil,"she said;"and I shall be abroad if any visitors come."What passed in her chamber that night no human being knew.Anne,who left her own apartment and crept into a chamber near hers to lie and watch,knew that she paced to and fro,but heard no other sound,and dared not intrude upon her.
When she came forth in the morning she wore the high look she had been wont to wear in the years gone by,when she ruled in her father's house,and rode to the hunt with a following of gay middle-aged and elderly rioters.Her eye was brilliant,and her colour matched it.She held her head with the old dauntless carriage,and there was that in her voice before which her women quaked,and her lacqueys hurried to do her bidding.
Devil himself felt this same thing in the touch of her hand upon his bridle when she mounted him at the door,and seemed to glance askance at her sideways.
She took no servant with her,and did not ride to the Park,but to the country.Once on the highroad,she rode fast and hard,only galloping straight before her as the way led,and having no intention.Where she was going she knew not;but why she rode on horseback she knew full well,it being because the wild,almost fierce motion was in keeping with the tempest in her soul.Thoughts rushed through her brain even as she rushed through the air on Devil's back,and each leaping after the other,seemed to tear more madly.
"What shall I do?"she was saying to herself."What thing is there for me to do?I am trapped like a hunted beast,and there is no way forth."The blood went like a torrent through her veins,so that she seemed to hear it roaring in her ears;her heart thundered in her side,or 'twas so she thought of it as it bounded,while she recalled the past and looked upon the present.
