"I don't care a snap how I look, but I am dreadfully warm," she thought, and taking a powder-puff from her mesh bag, she raised her veil and cooled her crimson cheeks and dabbed her nose; then she pinned the veil back closely; and gave her bright eyes a challenging and warning gaze.
"If you dare!" she murmured, then moved out into the aisle again and sought her place.
Edgar had hung up his hat, his back was to the car, and his gloomy eyes gazed out of the window. Violet sank into her chair, turning its back to him. "There!" she thought sternly, "we can ride this way all day. There's not the slightest necessity for recognition."
An hour passed and this seemed only too true. She took up the copy of "Life" which Roxana had left with her, and looked through it with more grim determination than is usually brought to bear upon that enlivening sheet.
Everything continued to be quiet behind her. She wondered if Edgar had gone to sleep; but what was it to her what he was doing? She became conscious that there were more strokes on the illustrations than the artists had intended.
"I must take off my veil!" she reflected.
Of course, no girl can take off her veil and hat without making some stir. She hoped she should not attract her neighbor's attention by these movements. She didn't.
At last all was comfortably arranged, and she picked up the periodical which had been Regina's offering and looked at her chatelaine watch, wondering how much time had been wasted already.
She never before heard of a man who stayed in his seat on the train unless he was an invalid. One would think he would at least walk up and down once in a while. She turned her chair a little away from the window and toward the aisle. A fat man who was her vis-à-vis glanced at her, and finding the glance most satisfactory, looked again, long enough to make her aware of him. She swung slowly back toward the window, but not so far that she could not command movements in the aisle.
Of course, Mr. Fabian was asleep. He had probably been turning night into day in the festivities which society events had recorded as preceding Mrs. Larrabee's departure for Europe.