Chapter Four.
Fellow-Travellers.
In the meantime all had progressed smoothly with Mrs Headfort.
The train was already in the station when she and her boxes found themselves on the platform, for Marlby was a terminus in its small way. It lay about an hour off the main line, and as express trains do not always wait the arrival of small local ones, departures from Marlby for the junction were characterised by most praiseworthy punctuality, any wafting that might occur being pretty sure to take place at Wrexhill junction itself.
But to-day the express proved worthy of its name, barely five minutes having been passed at the big station before Evelyn found herself re-established in her favourite corner of a first-class compartment, otherwise empty, of the train.
“Now I shall feel settled,” she said to herself, with satisfaction, “no more changes till I get almost to my journey’s end. I do hope nobody will get in. I wish I could go to sleep and then I should feel fresh on arriving, and I never like to shut my eyes with strangers in the carriage—for one thing, one looks so silly; I’ve often laughed at other people. I wish the train would start—oh, dear,”—as at that moment the door opened to admit a new-comer—“what a bother!” and as she made this mental ejaculation the train began to move.
“How rash of her!” thought Mrs Headfort, glancing at the intruder, whose back for the moment was turned towards her.
She was a tall, slender woman, neatly but simply dressed in black, young too, as far as Mrs Headfort’s present chances of observation could decide. “She looks like a maid—she must have got in first-class by mistake sorely,” but at this point in her reflections the black-robed figure turned, calmly seating herself opposite Evelyn, and lifting the thick veil she wore, disclosed to the gazer’s astonished eyes the face of her sister Philippa!
Mrs Headfort grew pale—more than pale indeed, perfectly white—and uttered a faint scream. For the moment, in the confusion of ideas always engendered by the utterly unexpected, she really felt as if she had seen a ghost. It was impossible for her at once to grasp the fact that before her was indeed her sister, a flesh-and-blood Philippa. She could scarcely have been more amazed had the figure in front of her proceeded to dissolve into thin air and disappear! And the effect on the girl herself of her sister’s agitation was for an instant paralysing. Any enjoyment she had anticipated in this coup d’état, any thought of “fun” completely faded. She felt so terrified and startled at the effect upon Evelyn of what she had imagined would cause at the most but a start of surprise, and probably some vehement remonstrance, that she was utterly unable to speak. Only, when at length—or what seemed at length, for in reality not twenty seconds had passed since the new-comer had revealed herself—Evelyn’s pale lips murmured with a gasp, “Philippa!” did her own power of utterance return to her.
“Evey, Evey,” she exclaimed, “don’t look like that I never thought you would be so frightened. I—I thought that on the whole you’d be pleased.”
The distress in Philippa’s face touched her sister. She tried to smile, and the effort brought some colour back again to her pale face.