I glanced round, startled. Her outspoken mention of my name took me aback. No doubt all the world was talking of John Ferguson; looking for him; wondering where he was. I did not want that crowd to learn that he was in its midst. My appearance of discomfiture she seemed to find amusing.
“Might I ask you just one question?”
“You are too hard on me; you may ask a thousand.”
“Did you propose to take me all the way to Ostend without giving me anything to eat? Perhaps you’re not aware that four o’clock is the actor’s dinner-hour. I’ve not had a morsel of food all day.”
“Miss Moore!”
Mine was the blunder then; I could have bitten my tongue off for uttering the name. A man behind turned towards us as if he had been struck by it—or I thought so. Had he known it, he was never so near having his head twisted off his shoulders. Had he allowed a sign of recognition to have escaped him, there would have been murder done. But he was a mild-looking, grey-haired person, and the sight of the expression with which I regarded him seemed to fill him with such astonishment, to say nothing else, that he retreated precipitately backwards, as if fearful that I was about to devour him then and there. I stumbled on.
“I entreat your forgiveness, but I—I hadn’t the faintest notion you were hungry.”
“No—you wouldn’t have.”
“Meaning that I am the sort of person who never does know anything? You are right; I am. But where shall we go? I believe there’s some sort of place in the station where we can get something to eat.”
“The nearest, please.”