“Has he!” exclaimed the countess almost fiercely, “then this house is no longer a place for me! I have stayed here too long already!” and stretching out her hand to the bell-rope, she pulled it violently to summon her maid. “I have been driven out of one home by unkindness, I will not remain in another to be insulted by such language as you have dared to address to me!” Again, with the force of passion, Annabella rang the bell, and it was answered, not only by Bates but by Mabel, who ran in alarmed by the second loud ring, and the sound of a voice raised in anger.
“Bates,” cried the countess, “bring me what I may require for walking, and then pack up my boxes, and follow me as soon as possible to the cottage in which Dr. Bardon resides.”
“O Annabella, dearest Annabella, do not leave us!” exclaimed Mabel, clinging to her cousin, while Ida, almost too much agitated to be intelligible, joined her entreaties to those of her sister.
“Wait—if it were only one day—one hour—only till papa should return!”
But Annabella was inexorable. She had worked herself into that state of passion in which remonstrance seems to have no effect but that of adding fuel to the flame. The storm of anger was less intolerable to her spirit than the state of doubt and self-reproach, which, like a chill, dark mist was falling on her soul, when the words of Mrs. Aumerle roused her from remorse to sudden resentment. The countess determined to seek the dwelling of Bardon, where she felt assured of a welcome, and where she would remain, as she declared, till she had formed arrangements with friends in London. It was, perhaps, unfortunate that Annabella had sufficient resources of her own to render her in pecuniary concerns quite independent of others. She had just arrived at the age which gave her free disposal of these resources, though it had certainly not proved, in her case, to be an age of discretion. It was foreseeing the difficulties and dangers that must beset the wealthy and wilful girl, whose vanity would render her the ready dupe of interested flatterers, that had made the vicar anxious to keep her beside him, until the kindly offices of mutual friends should re-unite her to her husband. This was now impossible. Annabella, closing her ears to remonstrance, and her heart to tenderness, quitted the home of her uncle with an expressed determination never to revisit it again. She would not even suffer her cousins to accompany her, but with sullen resolution set out on her lonely walk.