“I wish I had never seen or heard of him,” she said to herself. “Yet why should I let myself think of him in this foolish, weak way. My pride, if nothing else, should forbid my wishing even to see him. It is enough that he has assured me he can never think of me. Why do I think about him, except as a harassing care forced on me? I have known him but a few days; he is a stranger, an absolute stranger to me, and yet I continue to brood over his words, and my resentment against him seems gone.”
The drive to the station was even pleasanter than the drive of the day before. As yet the day was tolerably cool, and snow-white clouds flecked a sky of purest blue.
Lady Quaintree was not sorry to be rid of the handsome claimant to her protégée’s hand, heart, and desirable fortune, if it were only for a while. She could not, for all her maternal pride, be blind to the fact that Paul Desfrayne would be a formidable rival to her Gerald, unless the latter could secure a very firm interest in the affections of the young lady who might be addressed by both.
A polite guard chose a convenient compartment for the ladies. A smile, a hasty uplifting of the finger to his cap as Lady Quaintree’s delicate pearl-gray glove approached his brown palm, and then he closed the door respectfully.
But at the last moment, and just as the guard blew his whistle, a gentleman came rushing on the platform.
“Going by the express, sir? Here you are, sir—here you are. Not a minute to be lost,” cried the guard.
The good fellow had intended that the ladies should have their compartment all to themselves; but he had no time to move from the spot where he stood. The train began to draw its snakelike body to move out from the station. He threw open the door, and the gentleman sprang lightly on the step, steadied himself for an instant, and then entered.
The three ladies turned their gaze simultaneously on their fellow passengers, and the same exclamation escaped their lips at the same moment:
“Captain Desfrayne!”