Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/339

 ANOTHER BREAK-DOWN.

had awoke to the fact that she had made a mistake before that conviction had been brought home to the mind of Jingles; but she entertained not the shadow of a suspicion how radical that mistake was.

She became conscious that she had put herself in a false position almost as soon as she had taken the false step. At the first large station the guard had been obtrusively obliging, and a little familiar. He had allowed her to see that he regarded her and Giles as a young couple starting on their honeymoon tour; that he took a friendly interest in them, and he assured them he would allow no one to invade their compartment. He looked in on them half-way, to know how they were getting on; whether she would desire refreshments to be brought her to the carriage; whether she would like to have the blinds drawn down.

Arrived in town, they went to a quiet private hotel in Bloomsbury, mostly frequented by literary persons consulting the library of the British Museum. Jingles had not been there before. He knew of the hotel only by repute.

The landlady, an eminently respectable person, hesitated at first about receiving the young people. She did not understand the relation in which they stood to each other, and she looked inquisitively at Arminell's left hand. There was not a trace of family likeness that she could discover in their faces, when young Saltren explained that they were