It was, of course, for the gratification
of the idlest, most vagabond curiosity that he was eager to settle this
question: but then on such a long dreary journey, a man may be forgiven for
a good deal of idle curiosity.
He wondered who his companion was, and how she came to be travelling alone,
so young, so pretty, so much in need of an escort. There was nothing in her
costume to hint at poverty, nor does poverty usually travel in first-class
carriages. She might have her maid lurking somewhere in the second-class,
he said to himself. In any case, she was a lady. He had no shadow of doubt
about that.
She was tall, above the ordinary height of women. There was a grace in the
long flowing lines of her figure more striking than the beauty of her face.
The long slim throat, the sloping shoulder, not to be disguised even by
the clumsy folds of a thick shawl--these the traveller noted, in a lazy
contemplative mood, as he lolled in his corner, meditating an easy opening
for a conversation with his fair fellow-voyager.
He let some little time slip by in this way, being a man to whom haste was
almost unknown. This idle artistic consideration of Miss Level's beauty was
a quiet kind of enjoyment for him. She, for her part, seemed absorbed
in watching the landscape--a very commonplace English landscape in the
gentleman's eyes--and was in no way disturbed by his placid admiration.
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