"You might do worse," said Moncrief, dryly. "As I said before, you must 'dree your weird.'"
"Halloa!" cried Wilton, suddenly; "half-past seven, by Jove! I shall have a close shave to catch the train!" He rang the bell, ordered a cab; hastily donning his overcoat and thrusting his cigar-case into the breast-pocket, he shook hands heartily with his friend. "Good-by, old fellow; come as soon as you can, and let the moorland breeze sweep the cobwebs from your brain. You are too solemn by half for so good a comrade—good-by!"
It was a very close shave; but Ralph Wilton was just in time. The bell had rung before he had taken his ticket, after seeing a favorite pointer properly disposed of. "Here you are, sir," cried a porter, opening the door of a carriage. Wilton jumped in, and the door was slammed. "Stop! I say, porter," he shouted, as he glanced at the only other occupant, thinking to himself, "An unprotected female! this is too formidable!" But his voice was drowned in the loud panting of the engine, and they were off. "It cannot be helped," he thought, and set about arranging himself as comfortably as he could.
His companion was a young lady, he perceived, as his eyes became accustomed to the lamp-light. She was in black, and rather thinly clad for a night-journey. Her bonnet lay in the netting overhead. And a blue scarf was loosely tied over her head and ears. She seemed already asleep, though Wilton was dimly aware that she had opened a pair of large dark eyes to look at him. She was a serious drawback to the comfort of his journey. But for her he could make a bed of the cushions, and stretch himself at full length; but for her he could solace himself with unlimited cigars, and enjoy the freedom of loneliness. Thinking thus, he stooped forward to take up an evening paper he had snatched at the last moment, and his cigar-case fell from his pocket. His obnoxious fellow-traveller opened her eyes. "If you smoke," she said, "do not mind me; it may help me to sleep." With a slight shiver she closed her eyes again, apparently without hearing Wilton's thanks, while his unspoken maledictions on the ill chance that placed her in the same carriage were, in some mysterious way, silenced and arrested by the charm of a soft, sweet voice, delicate yet full, with a certain sadness in its tones, and an accent not quite English. "A gentlewoman, I imagine," thought Wilton, as he moved from his place to the centre seat opposite her to be nearer the light. There was something touching in the childlike abandonment of her attitude; her head lay back in the angle of the division she occupied; her face was very pale, and a dark shade under the eyes bespoke fatigue. Long black lashes fringed her closed eyes, curling back at the ends, and all of color was concentrated in her delicately-curved lips. Ralph Wilton could not help glancing from his paper to her face, and forming conjectures respecting her. Why did her people let so fair, so young a creature wander about by herself? But he was by no means old enough to adopt a fatherly view of so pretty a subject. She must be seventeen or eighteen—here his companion murmured in her sleep, and sighed deeply; while Wilton, with a sudden access of chivalrous modesty, reproaching himself for presuming upon her unconsciousness to scan so closely the tender, childlike face that lay hushed before him, withdrew to his original position. Here he tried to read, but the face and figure of the old recluse nobleman flitted between him and his paper, and the bittersweet of his tone sounded again in his ears—what depths of disappointment and mortification that old man must have fathomed! Well, worse endings might have come about than the union of Lord St. George's title and property in his (Ralph Wilton's) favor; and, if he ever inherited these good things, he would certainly look up his erring cousin's children. These meditations were varied by sundry glances at his companion, vague conjectures concerning her. How soft and gentle her mouth looked! Yet there was a good deal of power in the wide, smooth forehead and delicately but clearly marked dark-brown eyebrows. As Wilton looked he perceived her shiver, without waking, and make a sleepy effort to fold her shawl closer. The night was growing colder, and Wilton, observing a small portion of the window next his companion open, rose to shut it. In moving to accomplish this, he touched the slumberer's foot. She opened her eyes with a sleepy, startled look—great, dark, lustrous eyes, which seemed to banish the childlike expression of her face.
"I beg your pardon," said Colonel Wilton; "but it is cold, and I thought you would like the window shut."
"Oh, yes, thank you; it is very, very cold." She sat up and rubbed her hands together, tying the blue scarf closer round her head, and thrusting carelessly under it a heavy tress of very dark-brown hair, that had become loosened, with utter disregard of appearances, as if only desirous of rest. "I am so, so weary," she went on, "and I dream instead of sleeping."
"That is probably because of your uneasy position," said Wilton. "If you will allow me to arrange the cushions for you, I think you may rest better—I am an old traveller."
"You are very good," she returned, hesitatingly; "how do you mean?"
"I will show you;" and he proceeded to make supports for one of the unoccupied cushions with a walking-stick and umbrella so as to form a couch, and then rolled up his plaid loosely for an impromptu pillow. "Now," he said, with frank good-nature, "you can rest really; and, if you will wrap yourself in my cloak, I dare say you will soon forget you are in a railway-carriage."
"Thank you very much," she replied. "How good of you to take so much trouble—and your plaid, too! You have left yourself nothing!"