"Are you going to Ostend?" she asked.
He doffed his hat and bowed.
"I am going by this train," he replied. "Can I be of any service to the Fraulein?"
"I am always nervous in a crowd," she said—"will you buy my ticket?"
He took the money. He could not see her face, for it was veiled, but he could distinguish its white, rigid mystery, and, full of wonder, he complied with her request. In a short time he returned with the ticket.
"Can I do anything else for you, Fraulein?" he asked.
"No," she replied, thanking him; and all the way to Ostend, the lad mused over the half-hidden beauty of that face, and the dreary tones of the sad young voice.
"There is some mystery," he said; and afterward, when he had read the papers, he knew what the mystery was.
She was safely seated in the furthest corner of a second-class carriage at last, her heart beating so that each throb seemed to send a thrill of fiery pain through her. Would she be in time? The train was an express, and was considered an unusually fast one, but it seemed slow to her—so slow. Her heart beat fast and her pulse throbbed quickly. Her face burned as with a flaming fire.
"What shall I do," she thought, with a terrified face, "if I fall ill, and cannot save him? Suppose—my brain is on fire now—suppose it becomes worse, and when the train stops I have no sense left to speak? They will try him—they will sentence him to death before I arrive. He will perhaps be dead when I am able to speak. What shall I do?" And the dread so overpowered her that she cried aloud in her anguish.