nd
of the difficulties on which that fear was contingent, vanished beyond
the edge of thought.

The stopping of the train at Garrisons would not have distracted her from
these thoughts, had she not caught a sudden look of distress in her
companion's eye. His seat faced toward the door, and she guessed that he
had been perturbed by the approach of an acquaintance; a fact confirmed
by the turning of heads and general sense of commotion which her own
entrance into a railway-carriage was apt to produce.

She knew the symptoms at once, and was not surprised to be hailed by the
high notes of a pretty woman, who entered the train accompanied by a
maid, a bull-terrier, and a footman staggering under a load of bags and
dressing-cases.

"Oh, Lily--are you going to Bellomont? Then you can't let me have your
seat, I suppose? But I MUST have a seat in this carriage--porter, you
must find me a place at once. Can't some one be put somewhere else? I
want to be with my friends. Oh, how do you do, Mr. Gryce? Do please make
him understand that I must have a seat next to you and Lily."

Mrs. George Dorset, regardless of the mild efforts of a traveller with a
carpet-bag, who was doing his best to make room for her by getting out of
the train, stood in the middle of the aisle, diffusing about her that
general sense of exasperation which a pretty woman on her travels not
infrequently creates.

She was smaller and thinner than Lily Bart, with a restless pliability of
pose, as if she could have been crumpled up and run through a ring, like
the sinuous draperies she affected. Her small pale face seemed the mere
setting of a pair of dark exaggerated eyes, of which the visionary gaze
contrasted curiously with her self-assertive tone and gestures; so that,
as one of her friends observed, she was like a disembodied spirit who
took up a great deal of room.

Having finally discovered that the seat adjoining Miss Bart's was at her
disposal, she possessed herself of it with a farther displacement of her
surroundings, explaining meanwhile that she had come across from Mount
Kisco in her motor-car that morning, and had been kicking her heels for
an hour at Garrisons, without even the alleviation of a cigarette, her
brute of a husband having neglected to replenish her case before they
parted that morning.

"And at this hour of the day I don't suppose you've a single one left,
have you, Lily?" she plaintively concluded.

Miss Bart caught the start