Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/280

 though she had tried conscientiously to resign herself to the necessity of stopping. She wired again to Sir Ian, and thought of him continually, with the same heavy presentiment of—she knew not what. Again and again she accused herself of foolish superstition, but she could not put away the feeling that he was calling to her. It was as if she could hear his voice crying out of a great darkness, "Terry! Terry! Good-bye!"

Any observant person, a student of life and human character, would have noticed the two travellers with a particular interest, sharpened to curiosity. An unobservant person would merely have seen a young woman and a girl journeying together; the woman gracious and distinguished in appearance, with supreme charm of individuality; the girl brilliantly beautiful, with cheeks like roses and blue eyes like stars. He would have seen that they were well but simply dressed, that they did not trouble to talk to each other much, though they seemed on friendly terms, and that both were rather tired of travelling, or impatient to reach England. The observant person, however, would have seen far more. He would have seen that the woman's pallor and the girl's roses were caused by the same almost unbearable anxiety; that their quiet manner was retained only by desperate efforts at self-control. He would have guessed that each wished to hide her excitement from the other, and that they