In such
condition, Mrs. Sparsit stood hidden in the density of the
shrubbery, considering what next?
Lo, Louisa coming out of the house! Hastily cloaked and muffled,
and stealing away. She elopes! She falls from the lowermost
stair, and is swallowed up in the gulf.
Indifferent to the rain, and moving with a quick determined step,
she struck into a side-path parallel with the ride. Mrs. Sparsit
followed in the shadow of the trees, at but a short distance; for
it was not easy to keep a figure in view going quickly through the
umbrageous darkness.
When she stopped to close the side-gate without noise, Mrs. Sparsit
stopped. When she went on, Mrs. Sparsit went on. She went by the
way Mrs. Sparsit had come, emerged from the green lane, crossed the
stony road, and ascended the wooden steps to the railroad. A train
for Coketown would come through presently, Mrs. Sparsit knew; so
she understood Coketown to be her first place of destination.
In Mrs. Sparsit's limp and streaming state, no extensive
precautions were necessary to change her usual appearance; but, she
stopped under the lee of the station wall, tumbled her shawl into a
new shape, and put it on over her bonnet.
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