Some might have regarded this
incident as an omen or a providential interference; but Ida was
neither superstitious nor speculative in her nature; she was positive
and willful, rather, and the current of her purposes always flowed
strongly, though it might be in narrow channels.
"There is nothing left for me to do," she muttered, "but go to the
village. I don't know whether Mr. Burleigh has laudanum, and my
asking for it might excite suspicion."
It was terrible to see her fair young face grow hard like marble
in her stern determination to carry out her awful design, and the
impress of this remorseless purpose filled Van Berg with so great
foreboding that he could not resist the impulse to follow the
desperate girl. If harm should come to her through the harshness
of others, and as he now feared, more especially his own, he would
never forgive himself.
Mrs. Mayhew and Stanton did not see her departure--they were in
anxious consultation in one of the small private parlors, and the
artist, to disarm suspicion of his design, entered the hotel, and
passed out again by a side door, from which he took a short-cut
across the field intending to watch Ida, without being himself
observed.
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