She thought, as she walked along, "I think I have read somewhere that 'whom the gods wish to take they first drive mad,' or something like that. It is just as well, as Geoffrey suggested, to keep Jack slightly insane to-day. It will prevent him from thinking my proposal strange. Poor Jack! To-day he would give me his right arm as a present. How shabbily I have treated him, and how well he has always behaved!"
About eleven on the following forenoon, Jack was waiting in the dining-room of the Hamilton railway station, looking out through the window to see Nina's train come in. He thought it better to escape observation in this way. Nor did Nina indulge in looking out the window of the Pullman. Everything had been fully arranged, and as the bridge train moved out of the station, Jack left his obscure post of observation and hastily passed through the crowd on the station and got on board the "smoker" in front. When clear of Hamilton he made his way back through the cars to the drawing-room car, where he found Nina, who was beginning to look a little anxious for his arrival.
The train took nearly two hours to trundle along to the bridge. For a time they talked together, but Nina was feeling the reaction of the excitement of getting away. She had had a good deal to do, and she did not feel that going away with Jack would prevent her from enjoying a fairly comfortable nap in the large swinging arm-chairs. She soon dozed off, and Jack, who was pleased to see her rest, walked to the end of the car and back again to calm his nerves. This sort of thing was new to him. He had a novel with him, but he could not read it. His "only books were woman's looks" to-day. Other people's adventures seemed poor to him just now, in comparison with his own.
While thus moving about restlessly he became a little interested in an elderly gentleman, evidently a clergyman, who was sitting unobtrusively behind a copy of the Detroit Church Herald. He passed this retiring person several times, in loitering about, and then, seeing him with his paper laid down beside him, stopped and said cheerfully:
"Got the car all to ourselves to-day."
"Yes," said the grave-looking person, with an American accent. "And pleasant, too, on a warm day like this. It's worth the extra quarter to get out from among the crying babies and orange-peel and come in here and travel comfortably. Going far?"
"Only as far as Buffalo," said Jack, taking a seat beside him, for want of anything better to do.
"That is where I reside."
"Ah, indeed!" said Jack. "You make Buffalo the scene of your official duties?"
The other nodded. "I have been for a visit to Detroit, and now I am going back to relieve my superior in the church, so that he may take a holiday also. I think we clergy need a holiday as much as any other people I ever saw. Do you know Buffalo at all?"