Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/288

bride if they could be brought to her eyes. Revenge of some sort Liane was determined to have, and though the letter had been taken away before she had time to fix the address in her mind, she knew that Ernest's property was in the district of Loire, and felt sure she could find him, if only she had plenty of money to carry her through the search. Unfortunately she had been extravagant, and had saved little or nothing. Desperate, the idea came to her that she might get leave for a day from Lady Hereward, take a diamond chain of her mistress's to London and have the stones replaced with paste. The brilliants were cut in such a way that they could easily be copied, and soon after Liane had fifty pounds in her possession. Lady Hereward's manner, however, changed toward her at the time, or she fancied it did; and, her guilty conscience making her fear that her mistress might be planning to have her arrested, she determined to "disappear," instead of giving a week's notice as she had intended. Arrived in France, she was not able after all to find Bayne, who had perhaps taken a French name, to put her off the track, in case she pursued him. Some of her money was stolen in a hotel, and the rest she spent in vain searchings for Ernest. Eventually she was driven to pawn her clothes, and, at the end of her tether at last, she tried to end her life with a dose of laudanum. She took too much, however, and recovered to find herself very ill in a hospital at Blois.