 were at an
end.

As no carriage could approach within three quarters of a mile of the
house where Lady Adelina was concealed, they were obliged to walk to the
road where Mrs. Stafford had directed a post chaise to wait for them,
which she had hired at a distant town, where it was unlikely any enquiry
would be made.

Long disuse, as she had hardly ever left the cottage from the moment of
her entering it, and the extreme weakness to which she was reduced, made
Emmeline greatly fear that Lady Adelina would never be able to reach the
place. With her assistance, and that of her Ladyship's woman, slowly and
faintly she walked thither; and Emmeline saw her happily placed in the
chaise. Every thing had been before settled as to the conveyance of the
servant and baggage, and to engage the secresy of the woman with whom
she had dwelt, by making her silence sufficiently advantageous; and as
they hoped that no traces were left by which they might be followed, the
spirits of the fair travellers seemed somewhat to improve as they
proceeded on their journey.--Emmeline felt her heart elated with the
consciousness of doing good; and from the tender affection and
assistance of such a friend, which could be considered only as the
benevolence of heaven itself, Lady Adelina drew a favourable omen, and
dared entertain a faint hope that her penitence had been accepted.

They arrived without any accident at Bath, the following day; and
Emmeline, leaving Lady Adelina at the inn, went out immediately to
secure lodgings in a retired part of the town. As soon as it was dark,
Lady Adelina removed thither in a chair; and was announced by Emmeline
to be the wife of a Swiss officer, to be herself of Switzerland, and to
bear the name of Mrs. St. Laure--while she herself, as she was very
little known, continued to pass by her own name in the few transactions
which in their very private way of living required her name to be
repeated.

When Mrs. Ashwood found that Emmeline had left Woodfield clandestinely
and alone, and that Mrs. Stafford evaded giving any account whither she
was gone, by saying coldly that she was gone to visit a friend in
Surrey whom she formerly knew in Wales, all the suspicions she had
herself harboured, and Miss Galton encouraged, seemed confirmed. James
Crofts had related, not without exaggerations, what he had been witness
to in the copse; and it was no longer doubted but that she was gone with
Fitz-Edward, which at once accounted for her departure and the sudden
and
