"I must live until he is free," she said with stern determination--"then death will be welcome!"
They were no idle words that she spoke; all that life held brightest, dearest, and best, was past for her. Her only hope was that she might reach Loadstone in time to save Claude. She knew how soon she would be missed, and how easily she might be tracked. Suppose that they sent or went to her room and found it empty, and then made inquiries and learned that she had taken a ticket for Ostend? They could not overtake the train, but they could telegraph to Ostend and stop her. In that case she would be too late to save Claude. The station was full of people. She saw a lad among them--he seemed to be about fifteen--and she went up to him.
"I am going by this train," he replied. "Can I be of any service to the _Fraulein_?"
"I am always nervous in a crowd," she said--"will you buy my ticket?"
He took the money. He could not see her face, for it was veiled, but he could distinguish its white, rigid mystery, and, full of wonder, he complied with her request. In a short time he returned with the ticket.
"Can I do anything else for you, _Fraulein_?" he asked.
"No," she replied, thanking him; and all the way to Ostend, the lad mused over the half-hidden beauty of that face, and the dreary tones of the sad young voice.
"There is some mystery," he said; and afterward, when he had read the papers, he knew what the mystery was.
She was safely seated in the furthest corner of a second-class carriage at last, her heart beating so that each throb seemed to send a thrill of fiery pain through her. Would she be in time? The train was an express, and was considered an unusually fast one, but it seemed slow to her--so slow. Her heart beat fast and her pulse throbbed quickly. Her face burned as with a flaming fire.
"What shall I do," she thought, with a terrified face, "if I fall ill, and cannot save him? Suppose--my brain is on fire now--suppose it becomes worse, and when the train stops I have no sense left to speak? They will try him--they will sentence him to death before I arrive. He will perhaps be dead when I am able to speak. What shall I do?" And the dread so overpowered her that she cried aloud in her anguish.