'Yuss; not so dusty for a nigger,' the other man replied. 'Fust-rite bowler; but, Lord, he can't 'old a candle to good old Ranji.'
As for myself, nobody seemed to recognise me. I set this fact down to the fortunate circumstance that the evening papers had published rough wood-cuts which professed to be my portrait, and which naturally led the public to look out for a brazen-faced, raw-boned, hard-featured termagant.
I took my seat in a ladies' compartment by myself. As the train was about to start, Harold strolled up as if casually for a moment. 'You think it better so?' he queried, without moving his lips or seeming to look at me.
'Decidedly,' I answered. 'Go back to Partab. Don't come near me again till we get to Edinburgh. It is dangerous still. The police may at any moment hear we have started and stop us half-way; and now that we have once committed ourselves to this plan it would be fatal to be interrupted before we have got married.'
'You are right,' he cried; 'Lois, you are always right, somehow.'
I wished I could think so myself; but 'twas with serious misgivings that I felt the train roll out of the station.
Oh, that long journey north, alone, in a ladies' compartment—with the feeling that Harold was so near, yet so unapproachable: it was an endless agony. He had the Maharajah, who loved and admired him, to keep him from brooding; but I, left alone, and confined with my own fears, conjured up before my eyes every possible misfortune that Heaven could send us. I saw clearly now that if we failed in our purpose this journey would be taken by everyone for a flight, and would deepen the suspicion under which we both laboured. It would make me still more obviously a conspirator with Harold.
Whatever happened, we must strain every nerve to reach Scotland in safety, and then to get married, in order that Harold might immediately surrender himself.
