direction of the baggage-room with a sort of mastery of the situation
which struck Lanfear as springing from desperation rather than
experience.

Lanfear stood a moment hesitating. Then a glance at the girl on the
bench, drooping a little forward in freeing her face from the veil that
hung from her pretty hat, together with a sense of something quaintly
charming in the confidence shown him on such purely compatriotic
grounds, decided him to do just what he had been asked. The girl had got
her veil up by this time, and as he came near, she turned from looking
at the sunset over the stretch of wall beyond the halting train, and met
his dubious face with a smile.

"It _is_ beautiful, isn't it?" she said. "I know I shall get well, here,
if they have such sunsets every day."

There was something so convincingly normal in her expression that
Lanfear dismissed a painful conjecture. "I beg your pardon," he said.
"I am afraid there's some mistake. I haven't the pleasure--You must
excuse me, but your father wished me to ask you to wait here for him
till he had got his baggage--"

"My father?" the girl stopped him with a sort of a frowning perplexity
in the stare she gave him. "My father isn't here!"

"I beg your pardon," Lanfear said. "I must have misunderstood. A
gentleman who got out of the train with you--a short, stout gentleman
with gray hair--I understood him to say you were his daughter--requested
me to bring this message--"