"Thank you, I think I'll remain in this funny old club," she replied, raising her head with a smile. "I want to look at the papers—perhaps I shall steal some of the books, and hear some of the gossip? At any rate, I can find my way back alone."
As she spoke, she reached for a weekly illustrated, and the other two, with an unacknowledged sense of relief, walked forth side by side into the beautiful Eastern evening.
Angel sat with her elbows planted on the table, absorbed in a story, till she was roused by footsteps and voices, the sound of ponies clattering up to the door, of men shouting for syces: people poured in, as it were, in a body. She felt a little shy, and hid herself as well as she could behind her paper. Those who noticed her casually, merely saw the top of a hat, and a white sleeve, and took for granted that she was one of the strangers from the camp.
Billiard balls began to be knocked about, lamps were lit, several ladies came to the table, some took up papers, and all talked.
"And so the Evanses have got their orders," said a deep voice beside Angel, addressing her vis-à-vis, a handsome, rather haggard woman of thirty, dressed in a pretty pink cotton and a fashionable hat.
"I'm very sorry," she responded, "we shall miss them dreadfully—I've bespoke their cook."
"Well, he will console you—being the best in the station. I wanted him myself," said Deep Voice; "now I must wait till you go."
"But I shall probably carry him off," retorted the other lady with a laugh. "Any news in the papers?"
"Not a word," replied Deep Voice, "I read them all this morning," pushing over the Pioneer. "There is something about a man I knew when I was a girl—a Colonel Gascoigne—he has got on wonderfully—he can't be forty. We come from the same part of the world."
"Oh!" indifferently, reaching for the paper with a jingling of bangles, "was he, by any chance, the Gascoigne who broke his heart for Lola Waldershare?"