But suddenly she started up; for a noble instinct told her this blow
must not fall on the wife as it had on her, and in her time of peril.

She had her bonnet on in a moment, and for the first time in her life,
darted out of the house without her maid. She flew along the streets,
scarcely feeling the ground. She got to Dear Street, and obtained Philip
Staines's address. She flew to it, and there learned he was down at
Kent Villa. Instantly she telegraphed to her maid to come down to her
at Gravesend, with things for a short visit, and wait for her at the
station; and she went down by train to Gravesend.

Hitherto she had walked on air, driven by one overpowering impulse.
Now, as she sat in the train, she thought a little of herself. What was
before her? To break to Mrs. Staines that her husband was dead. To tell
her all her misgivings were more than justified. To encounter her cold
civility, and let her know, inch by inch, it must be exchanged for
curses and tearing of hair; her husband was dead. To tell her this, and
in the telling of it, perhaps reveal that it was HER great bereavement,
as well as the wife's, for she had a deeper affection for him than she
ought.

Well, she trembled like an aspen leaf, trembled like one in an ague,
even as she sat. But she persevered.

A noble woman has her courage; not exactly the same as that which leads
forlorn hopes against bastions bristling with rifles and tongued with
flames and thunderbolts; yet not inferior to it.

Tadcaster, small and dull, but noble by birth and instinct, had seen the
right thing for her to do; and she, of the same breed, and nobler far,