Barr's some months before she left Friars' Moat. He had said, when she remarked it, that he had promised his mother, before her death, to keep a weapon of some sort always loaded in the house while living in the country. Once during the mother's lifetime, a thief had broken in, during the night. She had never quite got over the fright she suffered then, and because of it she exacted the promise from her son.
Having secured the jewels and money, panic overtook Liane, and leaving the door ajar as she had found it, she hurried away very fast, in spite of her exhaustion. In order not to be seen, she kept always to the shelter of the woods, selecting little by-paths, and met no one. An idea came to her that she might call at Deodar Lodge, and see if Ernest was there, or had been there, but she dared not, lest some one should catch her coming out of the forest.
She walked a very long distance, she did not know exactly how far, but at last had the courage to show herself in the village of Defford, and go to the railway-station.
The people she passed paid no particular attention to her, and she grew braver. She took a ticket to London, and went to Westbourne Grove, because she had had lodgings there before; but she did not venture back to the same street. She went to a house in Morton Crescent, where she saw a bedroom with attendance advertised, and gave the name of Madame Ernest.
