"Oh, How! How!" she trembled, "is it to be always like this with you and me? Is it to be always, everywhere, so?"
But the man said never a word.
Two hours had passed. The girl had breakfasted. A wood fire crackled cheerfully in the sheet iron heater of the tiny room where the same two people sat alone. Already the world had taken on a different aspect. Not that Elizabeth Landor had forgotten that recent incident at the depot. She would never forget it. It had merely passed into temporary abeyance, taken its proper place in the eternal scheme of things. Another consideration, paramount, all-compelling, had inevitably crowded it from the stage. It was this consideration that had held her silent far longer than was normal. It was its overshadowing influence that at last prompted speech.
"How did you know I was coming to-day?" she queried suddenly.
"How did you know I would be at the train to meet you?" echoed a voice.
The girl did not answer, did not pursue the subject.
"Tell me of Aunt Mary, please," she digressed. "I felt somehow when you wrote as if I—I—" A swiftly gathered shower called a halt. Tear drops, ever so near, stood in her eyes. "Please tell me," she completed.
The man told her. It did not take long. As of her prosaic life, so there was little to record of the death of Mary Landor. "It was best that you were away," he ended. "It was best for her that she went when she did."
"You think so, How, honestly?" No affectation in that anxious query. "You think I didn't do wrong in leaving as I did?"