He remarked the smooth, girlish freshness of her cheeks, the sense and humor of her mouth, the veiled gleam of excitement in her eyes of the changing sea; and saw, as well, that she was dressed for traveling, sensibly but with an air, and had brought a small hand-bag with her.
"Surprised and delighted," he replied, recovering, with mendacity so intentional and obvious that the woman laughed aloud.
"I knew you'd be!... You see, I had the carriage ahead, the one you didn't take. I was so disappointed when you flung up to the door and away again! You didn't see me hanging half out the window, to watch where you went, did you? That's how I discovered that your discourtesy was unintentional, that you hadn't recognized me,—by the fact that you took this compartment, right behind my own."
She paused invitingly, but Kirkwood, grown wary, contented himself with picking up his pipe and carefully knocking out the dottle on the window-ledge.
"I was glad to see you," she affirmed; "but only partly because you were you, Mr. Kirkwood. The other and major part was because sight of you confirmed my own secret intuition. You see, I'm quite old enough and wise enough to question even my own intuitions."
"A woman wise enough for that is an adult prodigy," he ventured cautiously.
"It's experience and age. I insist upon the age; I the mother of a grown-up boy! So I deliberately ran after you, changing when we stopped at Newington. You might've escaped me if I had waited until We got to Queensborough."
Again she paused in open expectancy. Kirkwood, perplexed, put the pipe in his pocket, and assumed a factitious look of resignation, regarding her askance with that whimsical twist of his eyebrows.
"For you are going to Queensborough, aren't you, Mr. Kirkwood?"
"Queensborough?" he echoed blankly; and, in fact, he was at a loss to follow her drift. "No, Mrs. Hallam; I'm not bound there."