There were other visitors to Mallowe Court travelling by the 2:30 from Paddington, but they were much smarter people than Miss Fox-Seton, and they were put into a first-class carriage by a footman with a cockade and a long drab coat.  Emily, who traveled third with some workmen with bundles, looked out of her window as they passed, and might possibly have breathed a faint sigh if she had not felt in such buoyant spirits.  She had put on her revived brown skirt and a white linen blouse with a brown dot on it.  A soft brown silk tie was knotted smartly under her fresh collar, and she wore her new sailor hat.  Her gloves were brown, and so was her parasol.  She looked nice and taut and fresh, but notably inexpensive.  The people who went to sales and bought things at three and eleven or “four-three” a yard would have been able add her up and work out her total.  But there would be no people capable of the calculation at Mallowe.  Even the servants’ hall was likely to know less of prices than this one guest did.  The people the drab-coated footman escorted to the first-class carriage were a mother and daughter.  The mother had regular little features, and would have been pretty if she had not been much too plump.  She wore an extremely smart travelling-dress and a wonderful dust-cloak of cool, pale, thin silk.  She was not an elegant person, but her appointments were luxurious and self-indulgent.  Her daughter was pretty, and had a slim, swaying waist, soft pink cheeks, and a pouting mouth.  Her large picture-hat of pale-blue straw, with its big gauze bow and crushed roses, had a slightly exaggerated Parisian air.

“It is a little too picturesque,” Emily thought; “but how lovely she looks in it!  I suppose it was so becoming she could not help buying it.  I’m sure it’s Virot.”

As she was looking at the girl admiringly, a man passed her window.  He was a tall man with a square face.  As he passed close to Emily, he stared through her head as if she had been transparent or invisible.  He got into the smoking-carriage next to her.

When the train arrived at Mallowe station, he was one of the first persons who got out.  Two of Lady Maria’s men were waiting on the platform.  Emily recognised their liveries.  One met the tall man, touching his hat, and followed him to a high cart, in the shafts of which a splendid iron-gray mare was fretting and dancing.  In a few moments the arrival was on the high seat, the footman behind, and the mare speeding up the road.  Miss Fox-Seton found herself following the second footman and the mother and daughter, who were being taken to the landau waiting outside the station.  The footman piloted them, merely touching his hat quickly to Emily, being fully aware that she could take care of herself.

This she did promptly, looking after her box, and seeing it safe in the Mallowe omnibus.  When she reached the landau, the two other visitors were in it.  She got in, and in entire contentment sat down with her back to the horses.