As Richard Dalrymple looked out upon the scene he thanked his lucky stars that there was no one there to bid him good-bye, and lest even a passing acquaintance should recognize him he hurriedly drew the window curtains and retired into the seclusion of his carriage.
“Thank God,” he murmured to himself as the train moved out of the station, “I’m glad I’m off. It was safer to run away, she carries altogether too many guns for me.”
As if to divert his mind from painful thoughts, he glanced out into the night and watched for a while, after an absent-minded fashion, the wayside stations as they fled past in endless procession.
Then an inbound express dashed by apparently smashing all the crockery of the world as it went, and the shock so far dislocated his ideas as to induce him to leave the window.
“I suppose I may as well make myself comfortable,” he presently murmured to himself. “Barkirk is four hundred miles away and there is no change of carriages.”
Saying this, he exchanged his tall hat for the regulation travelling-cap used in those ante-Pullman days.
As he uncovered his head, his clear-cut profile crowned with a profusion of light brown curls, such as ladies love to toy with, shone white and clear against the dark blue of the carriage upholstery.
“A strikingly handsome man both as to feature and complexion,” all women vowed Richard Dalrymple at first sight—“and a manly-looking man, too,” they were prone to add when they saw his width of shoulder and length of limb, and noted the frank fearless look of the well-opened dark blue eyes.
And yet as he opened his cigar-case to while away with “a weed,” the tedium of the long hours, there was an air of anxiety perceptible on his brow and a worn look expressive of much turmoil and uncertainty of mind visible around his eyes, which, to all appearance, the joy he had expressed at his escape had not to any appreciable extent relieved.
As the dainty cigar-case of sweet-smelling Russia leather lay in his grasp a tender look came into his eyes, and opening the clasp, two lovely bunches of blue Scotch “forget-me-nots” lay before him worked in silk in marked relief on the soft lining of the case.