s
coming manoeuvre was early detected, and she drew from her pocket the
little book he had seen lying unopened on the table, and said: 'I shall
have two good hours for reading.'

'You will not object?... I must accompany you to town. Permit it, I beg.
You shall not be worried to talk.'

'No; I came alone and return alone.'

'Fasting and unprotected! Are you determined to take away the worst
impression of us? Do not refuse me this favour.'

'As to fasting, I could not eat: and unprotected no woman is in England,
if she is a third-class traveller. That is my experience of the class;
and I shall return among my natural protectors--the most unselfishly
chivalrous to women in the whole world.'

He had set his heart on going with her, and he attempted eloquence in
pleading, but that exposed him to her humour; he was tripped.

'It is not denied that you belong to the knightly class,' she said; 'and
it is not necessary that you should wear armour and plumes to proclaim
it; and your appearance would be ample protection from the drunken
sailors travelling, you say, on this line; and I may be deplorably
mistaken in imagining that I could tame them. But your knightliness is
due elsewhere; and I commit myself to the fortune of war. It is a battle
for women everywhere; under the most favourable conditions among my dear
common English. I have not my maid with me, or else I should not dare.'

She paid for a third-class ticket, amused by Dacier's look of entreaty
and trouble.

'Of course I obey,' he murmured.

'I have the habit of exacting it in matters concerning my independence,'
she said; and it arrested some rumbling notions in his head as to a
piece of audacity on the starting of the train. They walked up and down
the platform till the bell rang and the train came rounding beneath an
arch.

'Oh, by the way, may I ask?'--he said: 'was it your article in
Whitmonby's journal on a speech of mine last week?'

'The guilty writer is confessed.'

'Let me thank you.'

'Don't. But try to believe it written on public grounds--if the task is
not too great.'

'I may call?'

'You will be welcome.'

'To tell you of the funeral--the last of him.'

'Do not fail to come.'

She could have laughed to see him jumping on the steps of the
third-class carriages one after another to choose her company for
her. In those pre-democratic blissful days before the miry Deluge, the
opinion of the requirements of poor English travellers en