In what mood had he written this reminder?  Sophia Rexford would surely not have been a woman of the world if she had not asked herself this question.  Did he think that on seeing her again he would care for her as before?  Did he imagine that intervening years, which had brought misfortune to her family, would bring her more within his grasp?  Or was his intention in writing still less pleasing to her than this?  Had he written, speaking so guardedly of past friendship, with the desire to ward off any hope she might cherish that he had remained unmarried for her sake?  Sophia’s lips did not curl in scorn over this last suggestion, because she was holding her little court of inquiry in a mental region quite apart from her emotions.

This woman’s character was, however, revealed in this, that she passed easily from her queries as to what the man in question did, or would be likely to, think of her.  A matter of real, possibly of paramount, interest to her was to wonder whether his life had really expanded into the flower of which she had thought the bud gave promise.  She tried to look back and estimate the truth of her youthful instinct, which had told her he was a man above other men.  And if that had been so, was he less or more now than he had been then?  Had he been a benefit to the new country to which he had come?  Had the move from the Old World to this—­the decision in which she had rashly aided with youthful advice—­been a good or a bad thing for him and for the people to whom he had come?

From this she fell a-thinking upon her own life as, in the light of Trenholme’s letter, the contrast of her present womanly self with the bright, audacious girl of that past time was set strongly before her.  It is probably as rare for any one really to wish to be the self of any former time—­to wish to be younger—­as it is really to wish to be any one else.  Sophia certainly did not dream of wishing to be younger.  We are seldom just to ourselves—­either past or present:  Sophia had a fine scorn for what she remembered herself to have been; she had greater respect for her present self, because there was less of outward show, and more of reality.

It might have been a quarter of an hour, it might have been more, since the train had last started, but now it stopped rather suddenly.  Sophia’s father murmured sleepily against the proximity of the stations.  He was reclining in the seat just behind her.

Sophia looked out of her window.  She saw no light.  By-and-by some men came up the side of the track with lanterns.  She saw by the light they held that they were officials of the train, and that the bank on which they walked looked perfectly wild and untrodden.  She turned her head toward her father.

“We are not at any station,” she remarked.

“Ay!” He got up with cumbrous haste, as a horse might rise.  He, too, looked out of the window, then round at his women and children, and clad himself in an immense coat.