Verrian interpreted for her:  “The sea-horses must have given out at Seasands.  Or probably there’s some mistake,” and he reflected bitterly upon the selfishness of Miss Macroyd in grabbing that victoria for herself and her maid, not considering that she could not know, and has no business to ask, whether this girl was going to Mrs. Westangle’s, too.  “Have you a check?” he asked.  “I think our driver could find room for something besides my valise.  Or I could have it come—­”

“Not at all,” the girl said.  “I sent my trunk ahead by express.”

A frowsy man, to match the frowsy horse, looked in impatiently.  “Any other baggage?”

“No,” Verrian answered, and he led the way out after the vanishing driver.  “Our chariot is back here in hiding, Miss—­”

“Shirley,” she said, and trailed before him through the door he opened.

He felt that he did not do it as a man of the world would have done it, and in putting her into the ramshackle carryall he knew that he had not the grace of the sort of man who does nothing else.  But Miss Shirley seemed to have grace enough, of a feeble and broken sort, for both, and he resolved to supply his own lack with sincerity.  He therefore set his jaw firmly and made its upper angles jut sharply through his clean-shaven cheeks.  It was well that Miss Shirley had some beauty to spare, too, for Verrian had scarcely enough for himself.  Such distinction as he had was from a sort of intellectual tenseness which showed rather in the gaunt forms of his face than in the gray eyes, heavily lashed above and below, and looking serious but dull with their rank, black brows.  He was chewing a cud of bitterness in the accusal he made himself of having forced Miss Shirley to give her name; but with that interesting personality at his side, under the same tattered and ill-scented Japanese goat-skin, he could not refuse to be glad, with all his self-blame.

“I’m afraid it’s rather a long drive-for you, Miss Shirley,” he ventured, with a glance at her face, which looked very little under her hat.  “The driver says it’s five miles round through the marshes.”

“Oh, I shall not mind,” she said, courageously, if not cheerfully, and he did not feel authorized further to recognize the fact that she was an invalid, or at best a convalescent.

“These wintry tree-forms are fine, though,” he found himself obliged to conclude his apology, rather irrelevantly, as the wheels of the rattling, and tilting carry all crunched the surface of the road in the succession of jerks responding to the alternate walk and gallop of the horse.

“Yes, they are,” Miss Shirley answered, looking around with a certain surprise, as if seeing them now for the first time.  “So much variety of color; and that burnished look that some of them have.”  The trees, far and near, were giving their tones and lustres in the low December sun.

“Yes,” he said, “it’s decidedly more refined than the autumnal coloring we brag of.”