d person, clothed to the heels
in a check traveling-coat, detached itself from the company of waiting
passengers, and blue-linen-clad porters, upon the central platform
before the main block of station buildings, and made its light and
active way across the intervening lines of crimson-stained metals.

"If I am a nuisance mention that chastening fact without hesitation,"
he said, standing on the railway track and looking up at her with his
air of very urbane intelligence. "Present circumstances permit us the
privilege--or otherwise--of laying aside restraints of speech, along
with other small proprieties of behaviour commonly observed by the
polite. So don't spare my feelings, dear Miss St. Quentin. If I am a
bore, tell me so, and I will return, and that without any lurking venom
in my breast, whence I came."

"Do anything you please," Honoria replied, "except be run over by the
Paris train."

"The Paris train, so I have just learned, is an hour late, consequently
its arrival hardly enters into the question. But, since you are
graciously pleased to bid me do as I like, I stay," Mr. Quayle
returned, stepping on to the platform and turning to pace beside
her.--"What a gaol delivery it is to get into the open! That last
engine of ours threw ashes to a truly penitential extent. My mouth and
throat still claim unpleasantly close relation to a neglected, kitchen
grate. And if our much vaunted _waggon-lits_ is the last word of
civilisation in connection with travel, then all I can say is that, in
my humble opinion, civilisation has yet a most exceedingly long way to
go. It really is a miraculously uncomfortable vehicle. And how Lady
Calmady contrives to endure its eccentricities of climate and of
motion, I'm sure I don't know."

"In her case the end would make any sort of means supportable," Honoria
answered.

Her pacings had brought her to the extreme end of the platform where it
sloped to the level of the track. She stood there a moment, her head
thrown back, snuffing the wind as a hind, breaking covert, stands and
snuffs it. A spirit of questioning possessed her, though not--as in the
hind's case--of things concrete and material. It is true she could have
dispensed with Mr. Quayle's society. She did not want him. But he had
shown himself so full of resource, so considerate and helpful, ever
since the news of Sir Richard Calmady's desperate state had broken up
the peace of the little party at Ormiston Castle, now five