"And if we don't?"
"Oh, I'll see that you're taken care of for the night; but they'll be there to a certainty."
I don't deny that when the train stopped at the platform and we stayed in the carriage while the other travellers cleared away, I had more than a little trouble to maintain what he had termed an Englishman's coolness. But my anxiety didn't show in my face.
Nessa's fate as well as my own depended upon what occurred in the next few minutes at the barrier; and I think that if it had been practicable to have choked Hoffnung, and his men, into insensibility, I should have been sorely tempted to make the attempt.
But the thought of Nessa made me keep my end up; there was nothing for it but to face the music; and when at last he rose to leave the carriage, all I did was to yawn and stretch myself and say that I should be jolly glad to get to bed.
"What a magnificent station!" I exclaimed, stopping on the platform to look about me as if that was the one subject which interested me at the moment.
Then I went on with him, my eyes fixed on a little knot of people at the barrier on whose words and acts my life not improbably depended.