It commenced to rain and she put up her umbrella. It was old, and in it were several slits.
I was in half a mind to raise my hat, wish her good-evening, and inquire if she were there in response to the advertisement addressed to Nello, yet on reflection I saw that such a movement would be very indiscreet, and that if she were really there as Nello’s representative then I could gain more by watching her. So, unnoticed, I stood within the station, my back turned to her, and my head buried in an evening paper. To her I was, I suppose, only an ordinary working-man, and if I had approached her she would have at once snubbed me.
Fortunately I so constantly changed my position that she never gave me a look, and was entirely unconscious of being watched. Greater part of the time I stood apart some distance, on the opposite side of the street at the corner of York Place.
From the eager way in which she watched every female approaching, I knew that she was waiting for a woman.
At last she became convinced that her vigil was in vain. The rain had ceased, she closed her umbrella and entered an omnibus which had pulled up before the station, and an instant afterwards moved on towards the Edgware Road.
It passed close to where I was standing on the kerb, and a few moments afterwards I was in a hansom following it at a respectable distance, my head again hidden in a newspaper. Down Edgware Road, past the Marble Arch and along Park Lane we went to Victoria Station, where the dark-eyed girl alighted, and entering the Chatham and Dover terminus passed through the barrier with the return half of a first-class ticket.
Without reflection I went to the booking-office, obtained a third for Loughborough Junction, a station through which most trains passed, and five minutes later was seated in a compartment near her. If she had really responded to my invitation, then it was my duty to discover her destination and learn something concerning her.
For half an hour I sat in the train looking out at every stopping-place, but seeing nothing of her.
At last, at a half-lit suburban station she descended and hurried out. I followed quickly, handing the collector a two-shilling piece as excess fare.
I glanced at the name on the station lamp. It was Lordship Lane.