, 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 entertained by the Seigneur Directors of
the class above them, was that they differed from cattle in stipulating for
seats. With the exception of that provision to suit their weakness, the
accommodation extended to them resembled pens, and the seats were emphatically
seats of penitence, intended to grind the sitter for his mean pittance payment
and absence of aspiration to a higher state. Hard angular wood, a low roof, a
shabby square of window aloof, demanding of him to quit the seat he insisted on
having, if he would indulge in views of the passing scenery, - such was the
furniture of dens where a refinement of castigation was practised on villain
poverty by denying leathers to the windows, or else buttons to the leathers, so
that the windows had either to be up or down, but refused to shelter and freshen
simultaneously.
    Dacier selected a compartment occupied by two old women, a mother and babe
and little maid, and a labouring man. There he installed her, with an eager look
that she would not notice.
    »You will want the window down,« he said.
    She applied to her fellow-travellers for the permission; and struggling to
get the window down, he was irritated to animadvert on these carriages of the
benevolent railway Company.
    »Do not forget that the wealthy are well treated, or you may be unjust,«
said she, to pacify him.
    His mouth sharpened its line while he tried arts and energies on the
refractory window. She told him to leave it. »You can't breathe this
atmosphere!« he cried, and called to a porter, who did the work, remarking that
it was rather stiff.
    The door was banged and fastened. Dacier had to hang on the step to see her
in the farewell. From the platform he saw the top of
