Her eyes brightened and softened. Her whole bosom heaved. I felt in a flash she was not wholly indifferent to me. Strange tremors in the air seemed to play about us. But she waved me aside once more. “Don’t press me,” she said, in a very low voice. “Let me go my own way. It is hard enough already, this task I have undertaken, without your making it harder.… Dear friend, dear friend, you don’t quite understand. There are two men at Nathaniel’s whom I desire to escape—because they both alike stand in the way of my Purpose.” She took my hands in hers. “Each in a different way,” she murmured once more. “But each I must avoid. One is Sebastian. The other—” she let my hand drop again, and broke off suddenly. “Dear Hubert,” she cried, with a catch, “I cannot help it: forgive me!”
It was the first time she had ever called me by my Christian name. The mere sound of the word made me unspeakably happy.
Yet she waved me away. “Must I go?” I asked, quivering.
“Yes, yes: you must go. I cannot stand it. I must think this thing out, undisturbed. It is a very great crisis.”
That afternoon and evening, by some unhappy chance, I was fully engaged in work at the hospital. Late at night a letter arrived for me. I glanced at it in dismay. It bore the Basingstoke postmark. But, to my alarm and surprise, it was in Hilda’s hand. What could this change portend? I opened it, all tremulous.
“Dear Hubert,—” I gave a sigh of relief. It was no longer “Dear Dr. Cumberledge” now, but “Hubert.” That was something gained, at any rate. I read on with a beating heart. What had Hilda to say to me?
“Dear Hubert,—
“By the time this reaches you, I shall be far away, irrevocably far, from London. With deep regret, with fierce searchings of spirit, I have come to the conclusion that, for the Purpose I have in view, it would be better for me at once to leave Nathaniel’s. Where I go, or what I mean to do, I do not wish to tell you. Of your charity, I pray, refrain from asking me. I am aware that your kindness and generosity deserve better recognition. But, like Sebastian himself, I am the slave of my Purpose. I have lived for it all these years, and it is still very dear to me. To tell you my plans would interfere with that end. Do not, therefore, suppose I am insensible to your goodness.… Dear Hubert, spare me—I dare not say more, lest I say too much. I dare not trust myself. But one thing I must say. I am flying from you quite as much as from Sebastian. Flying from my own heart, quite as much as from my enemy. Some day, perhaps, if I accomplish my object, I may tell you all. Meanwhile, I can only beg of you of your kindness to trust me. We shall not meet again, I fear, for years. But I shall never forget you—you, the kind counsellor, who have half turned me aside from my life’s Purpose. One word more, and I should falter.—In very great haste, and amid much disturbance, yours ever affectionately and gratefully,
“Hilda.”
It was a hurried scrawl in pencil, as if written in a train. I felt utterly dejected. Was Hilda, then, leaving England?
Rousing myself after some minutes, I went straight to Sebastian’s rooms, and told him in brief terms that Nurse Wade had disappeared at a moment’s notice, and had sent a note to tell me so.
He looked up from his work, and scanned me hard, as was his wont. “That is well,” he said at last, his eyes glowing deep; “she was getting too great a hold on you, that young woman!”
“She retains that hold upon me, sir,” I answered curtly.
“You are making a grave mistake in life, my dear Cumberledge,” he went on, in his old genial tone, which I had almost forgotten. “Before you go further, and entangle yourself more deeply, I think it is only right that I should undeceive you as to this girl’s true position. She is passing under a false name, and she comes of a tainted stock.… Nurse Wade, as she chooses to call herself, is a daughter of the notorious murderer, Yorke-Bannerman.”