'I shan't miss it, anyhow,' Rose remarked defiantly.
Scarcely a minute before the train was due, Milly descried Twemlow coming out of the booking office. They pressed through the crowd towards him.
'Ah!' he exclaimed genially. 'Here you are! Baggage labelled?'
'We thought you weren't coming, Mr. Twemlow,' Milly said.
'You did? I was kept quite a few minutes at the hotel. You see I only had to walk across the road.'
'We didn't really think any such thing,' said Leonora.
The conversation fell to pieces.
Then the express, with its two engines, its gilded luncheon-cars, and its post-office van, thundered in, shaking the platform, and seeming to occupy the entire station. It had the air of pausing nonchalantly, disdainfully, in its mighty rush from one distant land of romance to another, in order to suffer for a brief moment the assault of a puny and needlessly excited multitude.
'First stop Willesden,' yelled the porters.
'Say, conductor,' said Twemlow sharply, catching the luncheon-car attendant by the sleeve, 'you've got two seats reserved for me—Twemlow?'