"My lady wouldn't let Miss Decima come out in it," thought Wigham to himself, as he drove on.
CHAPTER XI.
LUCY TEMPEST.
The words of my lady, "as tall as a giantess," unconsciously influenced the imagination of Lionel Verner. The train was steaming into the station at one end as his carriage stopped at the other. Lionel leaped from it, and mingled with the bustle of the platform.
Not very much bustle, either; and it would have been less, but that Deerham Station was the nearest approach, as yet, by rail, to Heartburg, a town of some note about four miles distant. Not a single tall lady got out of the train. Not a lady at all that Lionel could see. There were two fat women, tearing about after their luggage, both habited in men's drab greatcoats, or what looked like them; and there was one very young lady, who stood back in apparent perplexity, gazing at the scene of confusion around her.
"She cannot be Miss Tempest," deliberated Lionel. "If she is, my mother must have mistaken her age; she looks but a child. No harm in asking her, at any rate."
He went up to the young lady. A very pleasant-looking girl, fair, with a peach bloom upon her cheeks, dark brown hair and eyes, soft and brown and luminous. Those eyes were wandering to all parts of the platform, some anxiety in their expression.
Lionel raised his hat.
"I beg your pardon. Have I the honour of addressing Miss Tempest?"