“It will stop at Chester and Crewe.”

“Then give me a ticket for Crewe,” she said, and, with a smile on his face, the clerk complied.  She took the ticket and he gave her the change.  She swept it into her purse with an absent, preoccupied manner, and he turned with a smile to one of his fellow-clerks, touching his forehead significantly.

“She is evidently on the road for Colney Hatch,” he observed.  “If I had said the train would stop at Liliput, in my opinion she would have said, ‘Give me a ticket for there.’”

But the object of his remarks, all unconscious of them, had gone on to the platform.  With the same appearance of not wishing to be seen, she looked into the carriages.

There was one almost empty; she entered it, took her seat in the corner, drew her veil still more closely over her face, and never raised her eyes.

A quarter past three; the bell rings loudly.  There is a shrill whistle, and then, slowly at first, the train moves out of the station.  A few minutes more, and the long walls, the numerous arches, are all left behind, and they are out in the blinding sunlight, hurrying through the clear, golden day as though life and death depended upon its speed.  On, on, past the green meadows, where the hedgerows were filled with woodbines and wild roses, and the clover filled the air with fragrance; past gray old churches whose tapering spires pointed to heaven; past quiet homesteads sleeping in the sunshine; past silent, quaint villages and towns; past broad rivers and dark woods.  Yet never once did the silent woman raise her eyes, never once did she look from the windows at the glowing landscape that lay on either side.  Once, and once only, she caught a glimpse of the golden sunlight, and she turned away with a faint, sick, shuddering sigh.

Her fellow-passengers looked wonderingly at her.  She never moved; her hands were tightly clasped, as one whose thoughts were all despairing:  Once a lady addressed her, but she never heard the words.  Silent, mute, and motionless, she might have been a marble statute, only that every now and then a quick, faint shiver came over her.

On through the fair, English counties, and the heat of the sun grew less.  The birds came from their shelter in the leafy trees and began to sing; the flowers yielded their loveliest perfumes, and the sweet summer wind that blew in at the carriage windows was like the breath of Paradise.

Still she had neither spoken nor moved.  Then the train stopped, and the sudden cessation from all sound made her start up suddenly, as though roused from painful dreams.

“Have we—­have we passed Crewe?” she asked.

And then her fellow-passengers looked wonderingly at her, for the voice was like no other sound—­no human sound; it was a faint gasp, as of one who had escaped a deadly peril, and was still faint with the remembrance of it.

“No,” replied a gentleman; “we have not reached Crewe yet.  They are stopping for water, I should imagine.  This is supposed to be one of the most out-of-the-way villages in England.  It is called Redcliffe.”