d said, "It is suffocating in this car;
cannot the window be put up?" and when it was put up, I would seem to
feel no relief, and in a few moments, perhaps, would be shaking with a
nervous chill. It must have been a miserable journey, as I remember it.
Once I said to Richard, after some useless trouble I had put him to, "I
am very sorry, Richard, I don't know how to help it, I feel so
dreadfully."

Richard tried to answer, but his voice was husky, and he bent his head
down to arrange the bundle of shawls beneath my feet. I knew that there
were tears in his eyes, and that that was the reason that he did not
speak. It made me strangely, momentarily grateful.

"How strange that you should be so good," I said dreamily, "when Sophie
is so hateful, and Kilian is so trifling. I think your mother must have
been a good woman."

I had never talked about Richard's mother before, never even thought
whether he had had one or not, in my supreme and light-hearted
selfishness. But the mind, at such a point as I was then, makes strange
plunges out of its own orbit.

"And she died when you were little?"

"Yes, when I was scarcely twelve years old."

"A woman ought to be very good when it makes so much difference to her
children. Richard, did my uncle ever tell you anything about my
mother--what sort of a woman she was, and whether I am like her?"

"He never said a great deal to me about it," Richard answered, not
looking at me as he talked. "He thinks you are like her, very
strikingly, I believe."

"Think! I haven't even a scrap of a picture of her, and no one has ever
talked to me about her. All I have are some old yellow letters to my
father, written before I was born. I think she loved my father very
much. The noise of these cars makes me feel so strangely. Can't we go
into the one behind? I am sure it cannot be so bad."

"This is the best car on the train, Pauline. I know the noise is very
bad, but try to bear it for a little while. We shall soon be there." And
so on, through the weary journey.

At one station Richard got out, and I saw him speaking to several men. I
believe he was hoping to find a doctor, for he was thoroughly
frightened.

Before we reached the city I was past being frightened for myself, for I
was suffering too much to think of what might be the result of my
condition. When we left the cars, and Richard put me in a carriage, the
motion of the carriage and its jarring over the stones were almost
unend