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Shaw was in the corner of a second-class compartment in the Marseilles train. Opposite her, huddled up, was the fragile form and white face of Hatty Baring. Her brother sat in the further corner, reading a book. The intermediate seats were filled, and emptied, and refilled again with farmers, peasants, commis-voyageurs, and small townsfolk; some with children, some with fowls in baskets, some with packages, mostly tied up in thin black oilcloth. On Elizabeth's knees was a book, but she was not reading. She was lost in thought, and had been so for the last hour. They flew past long rows of poplars, stretches of flat champagne country, high-roofed, many-windowed houses, surrounded by farm lands, and dignified by the name of châteaux, church-towers, villages, and streams; but though, with the eyes of the flesh, she saw these things, the eyes of the mind beheld a different panorama.

A letter from Mr. Twisden, before she left Paris, had reassured her as to her uncle's health for the time being. But it was easy to read between the lines. Mr. Twisden was troubled about his old friend. Of course he never touched upon the will, nor alluded to the passage in her