"What are you about, Jin?" said her friend. "Helen and I have been looking for you in the conservatory."
"Only posting my answer to Goldie," replied Miss Ross with a laugh. "Don't be jealous, Rose. He'll show it to you, I'm sure, if you ask him."
But she seemed absent and pre-occupied during their walk, though more cordial and affectionate in her manner to Helen than she had ever been before.
CHAPTER XV.
BETWEEN CUP AND LIP.
Never in her life, perhaps, had Helen enjoyed anything so much as her afternoon's journey to London with Mrs. Lascelles. The smiling landscape on either side the railroad looked fairer, brighter, more like home than ever, when seen under a glow of celestial light radiating from a happy heart. For her, that seemed a glory, shining direct from paradise, which was to her companion but a glare of heat and discomfort, dazzling, scorching—worse, unbecoming in the extreme.
"It's good for the country, my dear, that's a comfort; but I'm sure it's fatal to one's complexion," said Mrs. Lascelles, vainly endeavouring to combine the shelter of a blind with the draught from an open window at forty miles an hour. "If they're to make hay when the sun shines, now's their time. How provoking! We shall have him in here. I told the guard we wanted this carriage to ourselves. Dear Helen, can't you look as if you'd got the mumps?"
But dear Helen was possibly not desirous of assuming so disfiguring a malady, for the unwelcome passenger put his head into their compartment, and, being a man of the world, sued in formâ pauperis for an accommodation to which he was entitled by the purchase of his first-class ticket. He did not say, "I have as good a right here as you, having paid my fare;" but, lifting his hat, stepped quietly in with a smiling apology for disturbing them. "The train is so full," said he, "I cannot find room even second class. I hope I shall not be much in your way."
We all know how readily the sex are disarmed by cool audacity veiled under a respectful manner. The "odious creature" became "a pleasant gentleman-like man" on the spot, and Picard—for it was none other—so ingratiated himself with the ladies that, when he left them at Paddington, they burst forth simultaneously in praise of his appearance, his manners, his whiskers, his white hat, everything that was his.