I concluded was masquerading as maid. The very opposite of the younger
woman (about her more directly), a neatly dressed unassuming person,
short and squat in figure, with a broad, plain, and, to the casual
observer, honest face, slow in movement and of no doubt sluggish
temperament, not likely to be moved or distressed by conscience,
neither at the doing or the memory of evil deeds.

Now the conductor came up and civilly bowed them towards their
carriage, mine, which they entered at the other end as I left it
making for the restaurant, not a little interested in what I had
heard.

Who and what could these two people be with whom I was so strangely
and unexpectedly thrown? The one was a lady, I could hardly be
mistaken in that; it was proved in many ways, voice, air, aspect, all
spoke of birth and breeding, however much she might have fallen away
from or forfeited her high station.

She might have taken to devious practices, or been forced into them;
whatever the cause of her present decadence she could not have been
always the thief she now confessed herself. I had it from her own
lips, she had acknowledged it with some show of remorse. There must
surely have been some excuse for her, some overmastering temptation,
some extreme pressure exercised irresistibly through her emotions, her
affections, her fears.

What! this fair creature a thief? This beautiful woman, so richly
endowed by nature, so outwardly worthy of admiration, a despicable
degraded character within? It was hard to credit it. As I still
hesitated, puzzled and bewildered, still anxious to give her the