Chapter Six.
“Miss Ray.”
In the interest of their near approach to their journey’s end, Philippa put her recent fellow-travellers out of her mind. The afternoon was drawing in as she stepped out on to the platform at Wyverston; a fresh, invigorating breeze met her, bringing with it what she could almost have fancied a faint scent of the sea.
“We are not very far from the coast, I know,” she thought to herself, “but I had no idea it was such hilly country. It must be very bleak in winter,” and the thought made her hasten to her sister to ensure her wrapping up before leaving the shelter of her comfortable compartment.
Mrs Headfort was looking out for her.
“Evey,” began Philippa hastily, but in an instant corrected herself. “You must let me undo the rugs, ma’am,” she said in the quiet tone of voice she had adopted to suit her new personality. “It is ever so much colder here than at home.”
“Naturally,” said Evelyn; “we have been coming north all the way. Yes, I suppose we had better get out my fur cloak.”
There was no time to do so in the carriage, however. But when all their belongings were safely collected on the platform, Philippa hastened to extricate the garment in question. She had laid the bundle of rugs on the top of a portmanteau, imagining it to be one of their own boxes; but as she strapped up the roll again, the letters “M.V.G.” on the surface beneath caught her eyes, and glancing round she noticed a gun-case on which was painted in white letters the name “M.V. Gresham.”
“How odd!” she thought; “whose things can these be? No other passenger has got out. And what a strange coincidence that I had said to myself that Solomon’s master somehow reminded me of Mr Gresham at Dorriford!”
“This luggage is not ours,” she went on aloud, to the attendant porter; “has it been put out by mistake?”
“It’s all right, miss,” said a young footman, whom she now observed for the first time; “it’s to go up in the cart along of your lady’s. Mr Gresham—I should say Mr Michael—always gets out at Linley and walks up across the moor.”