She laughed, softly and shyly, and again the shadow fled for a time. What did anything matter save the fact that they were together, with all the world before them?
“Why don’t you smoke?” she asked presently. “I’m sure you’re dying for a cigarette, you poor boy; and I don’t believe you had anything to eat at the house—it was all such a fluster. We’ll have tea in the train, if George Winston has the sense to order a tea-basket for us.”
“Trust old George for that,” laughed Roger, feeling in one pocket after the other. “He never forgets anything. Now, where on earth is that cigarette case?”
“Did you have it this morning?”
“Of course I did. It’s the one you gave me at Christmas; I’ve never been without it since.”
“Perhaps it’s in your other suit,” she suggested; “the clothes you were to have worn.”
“No, it’s not, for I had it all right this morning; but I haven’t got it now, that’s certain!”
His face and manner expressed more concern than mere loss of a cigarette case would seem to warrant, even though it was one of her gifts to him.
“Never mind. I dare say it will turn up; and perhaps you’ll have time to get some at Victoria. We’re nearly there. Why, Roger, what’s the matter?”
The cab had halted by the station entrance in Wilton Road, waiting its turn to enter, and Roger, still fumbling in his pockets in the futile search for the cigarette case, suddenly leaned forward and stared out of the window, uttering a quick exclamation as of surprise and horror.