'Is my company so hateful—or are we to be enemies now?'
'As you please,' she replied, with growing irritation, for, her secret sentiments apart, the sudden situation exasperated her, after all that had occurred. 'To meet you here was, at least, the last thing I could have expected.'
'Or wished?'
'I have no reason for not replying in the affirmative—yes.'
He sighed, and for a moment looked out of the window at the past-flying landscape, across which the white cloud of the engine smoke was whirling. After a pause, he asked in a tone of assumed indifference:
'Are you going far by this train?'
'Far or near cannot possibly interest you, Captain Fotheringhame; but I may mention that I am going to Eaglescraig in Cunninghame.'
'Eaglescraig!' he exclaimed, forgetting his pretended calmness of manner.
'And you?' she inquired, for she had a tender interest in him, in spite of herself.
'I am going there too,' he replied, with the slightest twinkle of mischief in his handsome eyes.