Before she would even attempt to go to rest, she sent a note of enquiry to Mr Naird, the surgeon, whom she had seen at Mrs Maple's: his answer was consonant to what he had already pronounced to Harleigh.
Nothing now appeared so urgent to Ellis, as flying the fatal sight of Harleigh. To wander again alone, to seek strange succour, new faces, and unknown haunts; to expose her helplessness, plead her poverty, and confess her mysterious, nameless situation; even to risk delay in receiving the letter upon which hung all her ultimate expectations, seemed preferable to the danger of another interview, that might lead to the most horrible of catastrophes;--if, already, the danger were not removed by a termination the most tragic.
To escape privately from Brighthelmstone, and commit to accident, since she had no motive for choice, the way that she should go, was, therefore her determination. Her debts were all paid, save what their discharge had made her incur with that very Harleigh from whom she must now escape; though to the resources which he had placed in her hands, she owed the liberation from her creditors, that gave her power to be gone; and must owe, also, the means for the very flight which she projected from himself. Severely she felt the almost culpability of an action, that risked implications of encouragement to a persevering though rejected man. But the horrour of instigating self-murder conquered every other; even the hard necessity of appearing to act wrong, at the very moment when she was braving every evil, in the belief that she was doing right.
She ordered a post-chaise, in which she resolved to go on stage; and then to wait at some decent house upon the road, for the first passing public vehicle; in which, whithersoever it might be destined, she would proceed.
At an early hour the chaise was ready; and she was finishing her preparations for removal, when a tap at her chamber-door, to which, imagining it given by the maid, she answered, 'Come in,' presented Harleigh to her affrighted view.
'Ah heaven!' she cried, turning pale with dismay, 'are you then fixed, Mr Harleigh, to rob me of peace for life?'
'Be not,' cried he, rapidly, 'alarmed! I will not cost you a moment's danger, and hardly a moment's uneasiness. A few words will remove every fear; but I must speak them myself. Elinor is at this instant out of all but wilful danger; wilful danger, however, being all that she had had to encounter, it must be guarded against as sedulously as if it were inevitable. To this end, I must leave Brighthelmstone immediately--'