While he was hovering over the fire in the ladies’ waiting room, shivering with the cold, and feeling inconceivably wretched, a tall, portly woman entered, bearing a large gripsack in one hand, a heavy shawl and waterproof in the other.
She wore a long circular of some rough cloth, which completely covered her from her neck to her heels, a knitted hood upon her head, a pair of brown woolen mittens on her hands, and looked so warm and comfortable that Geoffrey shivered afresh.
His eyes fastened themselves instantly and enviously upon the shawl she carried.
A bright idea struck him, and, addressing her courteously, he asked her if she would sell it to him, explaining briefly that he had been on his way to a wedding in a close carriage, when accident threw him unprotected out into the cold.
“I will give you twenty dollars for that shawl, madame,” he said, knowing well, however, that it was not really worth half that sum.
But she refused his offer—the shawl had belonged to a sister who had but just died, and she could not part with it; however, she would sell him the circular she had on, she said, for half what he had offered for the other wrap, and wear that herself.
This proposal pleased him even better than his own, for he would be far less conspicuous in the dark circular, and he never had felt better over a bargain, or experienced a greater sense of personal comfort, than when he gave up his ten dollars and wrapped himself in the shabby garment, just as the lazy train came puffing up to the station.
He found a seat near the stove, and strove to possess his soul in patience until he should reach the main line. The waiting at the junction, however, was even a greater tax upon his nerves, but it was over at last, and, boarding the Brooklyn train the moment it stopped, he was soon rolling rapidly toward home.
He reached Brooklyn only a little before midnight, called a carriage and arrived before his own door five minutes before the hour struck. He let himself quietly in with his latch-key, and, fearing he hardly knew what, stole up to Gladys’ room, where he had observed a light, and seen shadows on the curtains before entering the house.