“Brompton Square—we turn off at Stanhope Terrace, just past the Lancaster Gate Station. It is one of those squares lying between the Park and Edgware Road.”
“I know, I know. Its a long walk, but perhaps it will get lighter as we go on. These dense fogs are often very local. Keep tight hold of my arm, please. If we are once separated, it might not be easy to meet again.”
“No, indeed! I could not have believed it was so easy to get lost. My brother was beside me one instant, the next—it was your coat-sleeve! I hope I did not shake it too violently! I was so nervous and frightened I did not think what I was doing.”
She laughed as she spoke, her youthful spirits beginning to assert themselves again, as her confidence was assured. The face of her companion was unknown, but the tone of that quite, “Don’t be afraid, I had a sister of my own,” had put an end to her fears. Here was an adventure indeed—a full-fledged adventure! In anticipation she felt the joys of relating her experiences to a breathless audience in the schoolroom, and thrilled with importance. The stranger did not echo her laugh, however, but merely murmured a few words of conventional disclaimer and relapsed into silence. Betty could hear him sigh now and then as they made their way onward—slowly feeling the way from point to point through the eerie, all-enveloping gloom. Sometimes a brief question to a link-boy would assure them that they were still on the right road; sometimes they wandered off the pavement and were suddenly aware of the champing of horses dangerously near at hand; sometimes for a minute or two they stood still, waiting to find a clue to their position; but through all the strange man preserved an unbroken silence, until Betty’s nerve gave way again, and she cried in plaintive, child-like fashion—
“Oh, please would you mind talking a little bit! I’m frightened. It’s like a dreadful nightmare, feeling one’s way through this darkness—and when you are so silent, I feel as if you were a ghost like all the rest, instead of a real live man.”
“I wish I were!” returned the stranger bitterly. Then recovering himself with an effort, “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I am afraid I have been very remiss. To tell the truth, I was lost in my own thoughts when you came to me a few minutes ago, and I am afraid I had gone back to them, and forgotten that I had a companion!”
Forgotten! Forgotten her very existence! A young man rescues a beauteous maid—really and truly she had looked unusually well in all her smart Christmas farings—from a position of deadly peril, and straightway forgets her very existence! This part of the story, at least, must be omitted from the home recital. Betty pursed her lips in offended dignity, but in the end curiosity got the better of her annoyance, and she said tentatively—
“They must have been very nice thoughts!”
“Nice!”
The foolish girl’s word was repeated in a tone of bitterest satire.