There was more of it; a good bit more:  but it was all guarded commonplace, opening no window in the heart of the man David Kent.  Yet even in the commonplace she found some faint interlinings of the change in him; not a mere metamorphosis of the outward man, as a new environment might make, but a radical change, deep and biting, like the action of a strong acid upon a fine-grained metal.

She returned the letter to its envelope, and after looking up Gaston on the time-table fell into a heart-stirring reverie, with unseeing eyes fixed on the restful blackness of the night rushing rearward past the car windows.

“He has forgotten,” she said, with a little lip-curl of disappointment.  “He thinks he ought to remember, and he is trying—­trying because Grantham said something that made him think he ought to try.  But it’s no use.  It was only a little summer idyl, and we have both outlived it.”

She was still gazing steadfastly upon the wall of outer darkness when the porter began to make down the berths and Penelope came over to sit in the opposite seat.  A moment later the younger sister made a discovery, or thought she did.

“Why, Elinor Brentwood!” she said.  “I do believe you are crying!”

Elinor’s smile was serenity undisturbed.

“What a vivid imagination you have, Nell, dear,” she scoffed.  Then she changed the subject arbitrarily:  “Is mother quite comfortable?  Did you have the porter put a screen in her window?—­you know she always insists she can’t breathe without it.”

Penelope evaded the queries and took her turn at subject-wrenching—­an art in which she excelled.

“We are on our own railroad now, aren’t we?” she asked, with purposeful lack-interest.  “And—­let me see—­isn’t Mr. Kent at some little town we pass through?”

“It is a city,” said Elinor.  “And the name is Gaston.”

“I remember now,” Penelope rejoined.  “I wonder if we shall see him?”

“It is most unlikely.  He does not know we are coming, and he wouldn’t be looking for us.”

Penelope’s fine eyes clouded.  At times Elinor’s thought-processes were as plain as print to the younger sister; at other times they were not.

“I should think the least we could do would be to let him know,” she ventured.  “Does anybody know what time the train passes Gaston?”

“At seven-fifteen to-morrow evening,” was the unguarded reply; and Penelope drew her own conclusions from the ready answer and the folded time-table in Elinor’s lap.

“Well, why don’t you send him a wire?  I’m sure I should.”

“Why should I?” said Elinor, warily.

“Oh, I don’t know:  any other young woman of his acquaintance would, I fancy.  I have half a mind to do it myself. I like him, if you don’t care for him any more.”

Thus Penelope; and a little while afterward, finding herself in the library compartment with blanks and pen and ink convenient and nothing better to do, she impulsively made the threat good in a ten-word message to Kent.