Page:Hope--Sophy of Kravonia.djvu/85

THE NOTE—AND NO REASONS Lady Meg was asleep, when she heard herself addressed. The Frenchwoman who acted as their cook had come in and stood now on the threshold with a puzzled, distressed look on her face.

"I'm sorry, Mademoiselle Sophie, to tell you, but my lady has gone."

"Gone! Where to?"

"To England, I believe. This morning, after you had gone out, she ordered everything to be packed. It was done. She paid us here off, bidding me alone stay till orders reached me from Monsieur le Marquis. Then she went; only the coachman accompanied her. I think she started for Calais. At least, she is gone."

"She said—said nothing about me?"

"You'll see there's a letter for you on the small table in the window there."

"Oh yes! Thank you."

"Your room is ready for you to-night."

"I've dined. I shall want nothing. Good-night."

Sophy walked over to the little table in the window, and for a few moments stood looking at the envelope which lay there, addressed to her in Lady Meg's sprawling hand. The stately room in the Rue de Crenelle seemed filled with a picture which its walls had never seen; old words re-echoed in Sophy's ears: "If I want you to go, I'll put a hundred-pound note in an envelope and send it to you; upon which you'll go, and no reasons given! Is it agreed?" As if from a long way off, she heard a servant-girl answer: "It sounds all right." She saw the old elmtrees at Morpingham, and heard the wind murmur in their boughs; Pindar chuckled, and Julia Robins's eyes were wet with tears.

"And no reasons given!" It had sounded all right—before five years of intimacy and a life 67