"Where?" he asked quickly. "Never mind. Come this way, Juliet. Sharp!" And opening the door of a waiting room, he hurried her inside and out by another door into a road at the back of the station. A few minutes' sharp walking took them beyond the stir of the station.
Juliet was greatly agitated. "Oh, Algernon, she saw me! I am certain that she recognised me! And she will tell mother! Oh, what shall I do?"
"What does it matter?" he asked. "She would not recognise me. For aught she knows, we have a perfect right to be together. I might be your cousin."
"Oh, she knows I have no cousins," replied Juliet. "Hannah and Salome have some in Scotland, but I have none."
"Well, then, I might be their cousin," he said lightly, trying to smooth away her annoyance. "Why trouble about what a disagreeable old woman may think or say? We will go to an hotel now and get some tea, and then we can have a row or a drive to while away the time till the boat starts."
"If I had been a little nearer, she would have spoken," said Juliet, unable to dismiss the matter so easily. "And she is going back to London! She will tell them at home how she saw me at Dover!"
"But by that time, we shall be man and wife, and they will be unable to part us," he said.
Juliet's look did not brighten. Somehow, that consummation had ceased to appear to her a very happy prospect.
Algernon Chalcombe was over-confident as to the impossibility of his being recognised by Mrs. Hayes; that lady was greatly excited by the glimpse she caught of Juliet and her companion.
"John," she said eagerly to her husband, when he and her daughters came up, "John, I have just seen Juliet Tracy, accompanied by a man whom I am sure was that fellow Chalcombe. He had altered himself somewhat, but I am certain it was he. I am never mistaken in a face. Now, what can they be doing here alone?"