Lady Bell, Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

In the street Lady Bell set out walking rapidly-she dared not / run-straight on in the opposite direction from her lodging. She had a / conviction that she would get out of the town presently, and on the / great road, where she might overtake a conveyance.

She had an instinctive perception that Mrs. Sundon, however grateful and / concerned that Lady Bell should not suffer by her magnanimity, would be / too much taken up with Mrs. Sundon's own husband, with enlarging to him / on the risk he had run, and the necessity of prudence in his future / movements, to enter at once into a searching investigation of what had / become of Lady Bell, and an eager tracking of her footsteps. After Mrs. / Sundon had discovered that Lady Bell had not waited, but had gone with / as little ceremony as she had come, Mrs. Sundon would naturally conclude / that she had returned immediately to her husband, to prevent all / suspicion, and to carry out her programme. For Lady Bell's own sake, / Mrs. Sundon would resolve to be quiet on the incident of her visit.

Lady Bell reckoned herself secure of not being missed by her husband for / hours; and so soon as she was beyond the town the probability of her / being recognised was lessened. She could venture to walk more slowly, / and not wear out her strength at starting, to raise her veil, to push / down the neckcloth wound about her chin and mouth, and allow herself a / breath of the cool autumn air, in the fever heat of her progress, and / the agitation which had attended on her adventure.

It was in the latter end of the month of September, but the season and / weather were fine, and there were still hours of daylight.

Lady Bell was furnished with money; she had got an ample sum to spend at / Peasmarsh. The idea which had been in her head when she had still / thought of confiding her case to Mrs. Sundon, and bespeaking her / support, was to be put in the way of reaching London as speedily as / possible.

When in London she might apply to any survivor of Lady Lucie's friends / to hide her from Squire Trevor and his vengeance, to procure for her a / separation from him, to help her to get her own livelihood. This would / no longer be by the poorest place at Court-Lady Bell had resigned that / aristocratic resource-Queen Charlotte was too good and happy a wife / herself to pardon readily the errors of a miserable young wife.

But Lady Bell's vision had enlarged so that she conceived-Lady Bell / though she was, she might be _dame de compagnie_ to some old lady of / quality, on the model of Lady Lucie Penruddock.

Or she might turn her little talents and accomplishments, the / frivolousness of which had been so scouted, to use, after all, by / imparting them to the children of some great house.

Her imagination had grown, like everything else about her (she was half / an inch taller since her marriage), though even her imagination could / not persuade her that the bread of service would taste anything save / bitter to a woman of her degree, but it would be less bitter than what / she had eaten at Trevor Court and St. Bevis's, and bitter as it might / be, it was all the bread that remained to her, unless she were willing / to go back and be killed by Squire Trevor.

On the contrary, she could not help rejoicing that she had left him and / bondage behind, and that the world was before her. The sense of freedom / and of a new life sent a certain glow and throb of elasticity through / her veins.

Lady Bell trudged on alongside the ragged hedges, and keeping by the / posts which marked the king's highway, in the broken, deeply-rutted / road. She ceased to see any trace of the election, beyond a spurring / messenger now and again. The few travellers were of an honest though / homely description. The electioneering had done good for the moment, / scoured the neighbouring country, and collected the stoutest beggars, / the most rampageous tramps, into their dens in Peasmarsh.

There was a rustic yeoman, mounted on his best cart-horse, with his / sister behind him, clasping him round the capacious waist, trotting away / to spend the evening in hunting the slipper and roasting hot cockles / with some neighbours. There were farm-servants and labourers hieing home / from their day's work ere nightfall.

These wayfarers glanced with a little wonder at Lady Bell, even in her / ordinary scarlet habit, and her neckcloth, as a lady who ought to be on / her horse, with her servant behind her, and who might be on foot and by / herself as the result of an accident, or in consequence of keeping a / private appointment. But these were worthy people who took their / neighbours' adventures coolly, and did not, when they were not accosted / and asked to interfere, see themselves called on to forsake their proper / business and pleasure for the sake of a third party, in an adventure / which might be sorry enough.

The country folks were much the same as those whom Lady Bell had stared / at in the light of a novelty on the occasion of her journey from London / to St. Bevis's. It was not quite a year since then; Lady Bell was still / only between fifteen and sixteen, an age, indeed, not very practical, / and alternating between rashness and timidity.

She walked on in the lengthening shadows and growing chilliness, not / knowing whither she walked, only feeling that she was getting tired and / footsore. She resisted, for a wonderful length of time, the perplexity / and downcastness which stole over her, and took the place of her foolish / satisfaction.

But fatigue and uncertainty increased until they well-nigh overpowered / her, and she was in danger of sinking down at any moment in utter / exhaustion and consternation, weeping at the prospect of having to stay / there all night, and of dying of cold, if she were not murdered by / footpads.