“Oh, no; but this is a carriage for ladies,” she said.
“Dear me, what a pity!” cried the little man; but it was easy to see by his countenance that he did not think it a pity. “I am a stranger here,” he said, “a stranger in England. I don’t know all your ways. I will change at the next station if I am disagreeable to you.”
“Oh, no,” cried Dolly, horrified to be supposed guilty of rudeness. “It is not that. It is only that I am supposed always to travel by myself. Papa insists on a ladies’ carriage. But it does not at all matter,” she added, with a glance that was not flattering to the special intruder in question. “Nobody could mind——”
Dear, dear! Dolly thought to herself, this is ruder still; and blushed crimson.
The stranger, however, did not draw from this any conclusions which were humiliating to himself. People are not so close to mark our looks and words as we imagine them to be. He smiled serenely, and as the train was now plunging along in the fussy yet leisurely manner common to a country train which stops at all the stations, resumed, with an air of great satisfaction and complacency—
“I am very glad you don’t mind; for I came into the carriage on purpose—because I saw you get in. I wanted to speak to you,” said Mr. Markham Gaveston, with a genial smile.
Then Dolly began to quake a little. Was he mad—or what did he mean? “Do you know me?” she said, faltering. She had heard of the stranger at the Markham Arms, but had not seen him.
“I have the pleasure of knowing who you are,” he said, taking off his hat with the utmost politeness. “My little—relations, the little Markhams, pointed you out to me.’
“Oh,” cried Dolly again, “then you are——?”
“Yes, exactly,” he said, smiling, “that is what I am. I have come from the tropics, and I do not know much about England. If I say anything that is very unusual, I hope you will excuse me. It is disagreeable that they should be away just when I have come so far to see them.”