"Oughtn't we be starting?" she asked, with a lofty
assumption of indifference that might have been Lady Ulrica's.

Darrow, surprised by the change, but accepting her rebuff as a phase of
what he guessed to be a confused and tormented mood, rose from his seat
and lifted her jacket from the chair-back on which she had hung it to
dry. As he held it toward her she looked up at him quickly.

"The truth is, we quarrelled," she broke out, "and I left last night
without my dinner--and without my salary."

"Ah--" he groaned, with a sharp perception of all the sordid dangers
that might attend such a break with Mrs. Murrett.

"And without a character!" she added, as she slipped her arms into the
jacket. "And without a trunk, as it appears--but didn't you say that,
before going, there'd be time for another look at the station?"

There was time for another look at the station; but the look again
resulted in disappointment, since her trunk was nowhere to be found in
the huge heap disgorged by the newly-arrived London express. The fact
caused Miss Viner a moment's perturbation; but she promptly adjusted
herself to the necessity of proceeding on her journey, and her decision
confirmed Darrow's vague resolve to go to Paris instead of retracing his
way to London.

Miss Viner seemed cheered at the prospect of his company, and sustained
by his offer to telegraph to Charing Cross for the missing trunk; and
he left her to wait in the fly while he hastened back to the telegraph
office. The enquiry despatched, he was turning away from the desk when
another thought struck him and he went back and indited a message to his
servant in London: "If any letters with French post-mark received since
departure forward immediately to Terminus Hotel Gare du Nord Paris."

Then he rejoined Miss Viner, and they drove off through the rain to the
pier.

III

Almost as soon as the train left Calais her head had dropped back into
the corner, and she had fallen asleep.

Sitting opposite, in the compartment from which he had contrived to have
other travellers excluded, Darrow looked at her curiously. He had never
seen a face that changed so quickly. A moment since it had danced like
a field of daisies in a summer breeze; now, under the pallid oscillating
light of the lamp overhead, it wore the hard stamp of experience, as of
a soft thing chilled into shape before its curves had rounded: and it
moved him to see that care already stole upon her w