THE MAN WHO WAS IN A HURRY

He lay back in a corner seat of the carriage, panting, white-faced, exhausted.  His clumsy boots, studded with nails, were wet, and his frayed black trousers were splashed with mud.  In his eyes was the light of vivid fear, his delicate mouth was twitching still with excitement.  In his ears there rang yet the angry cry of the guard, the shouting of porters, the excitement of that leap through the hastily-opened carriage door tingled yet in his veins.  Before his eyes there was a mist.  He was conscious indeed that the carriage which he had marked out as being empty was tenanted by a single person, but he had not even glanced across towards the occupied seat.  What mattered it so long as they were off?  Already the fields seemed flying past the window, and the telegraph posts had commenced their frantic race.  Ten, twenty, forty miles an hour at least-off on that wonderful run, the pride of the directors and the despair of rival companies.  Nothing could stop them now.  All slower traffic stood aside to let them pass, the express with her two great engines vomiting fire and smoke, crawling across the map, flying across bridges and through tunnels from the heart of the country to the great city.  Gradually, and with the exhilaration of their ever increasing speed, the courage of the man revived, and the blood flowed once more warmly through his veins.  He lifted his head and looked around him.

Shock the first came when he realised that he was in a first-class carriage; shock the second, when he saw that his solitary companion was a lady.  He took in the details of her appearance and surroundings—­wonderful enough to him who had been brought up in a cottage, and to whom the ways and resources of luxury were all unknown.  Every seat save the one which he occupied was covered with her belongings.  On one was a half-opened dressing-case filled with gold-topped bottles and emitting a faint, delicate perfume.  On another was a pile of books and magazines, opposite to him a sable-lined coat, by his side a luncheon basket and long hunting flask.  Then his eyes were caught by an oblong strip of paper pasted across the carriage window—­he read it backwards—­“Engaged.”  What an intrusion!  He looked towards the woman with stammering words of apology upon his lips—­but the words died away.  He was tongue-tied.

He had met the languid gaze of her dark, full eyes, a little supercilious, a little amused, faintly curious, and his own fell at once before their calm insolence.  She was handsomely dressed.  The delicate, white hand which held her novel was ablaze with many and wonderful rings.  She was evidently tall, without doubt stately.  Her black hair, parted in the middle, drooped a little to the side by her ears, her complexion, delightfully clear, was of a curious ivory pallor unassociated with ill-health.  She regarded him through a pair of ivory-handled lorgnettes, which she carelessly closed as he looked towards her.