The tram glided into a station shed; the red lights glowed in at the window, palling the flickering tin lamp hanging from the roof. Strangers rushed pell-mell across the platform; and at last the door of this car was opened, and a young man looked in.
Margaret vehemently sought to cry out to him, to stretch out her hands, to moan, even, but in vain. She seemed petrified.
The young man's eyes passed aimlessly over the white-faced woman in black and her sleeping escort, and fastened doubtfully upon the disconcerted ruffian.
"Is Richard O'Grady in this car?" shouted he.
"I am the chap you want," returned the man in the fur coat.
The other handed him a telegram and vanished instantly, and the car moved on.
She saw him hold out a slip of paper to the dim flame and master its message, and the sickly pallor crept out of his cheeks and the coarse red came back.
He looked hard in her face with a sinister light on his visage, and smiled at her with a certain kind of grim admiration.
"You've overcrowded him, have you, my clever wench?" mattered he. "You must be a sharp 'un to do him. Curse your haunting eyes! you've all but overcrowded me, in spite of my leather hide. Confound you! I'll never get rid of them great eyes."
He broke out into a volley of fearful maledictions upon her, himself, and the "beast" who had given him the job, tearing up the telegram into inch pieces and tossing them insolently into Margaret's lap.