hatted. She stared at her, and said, "What a very hunted and escaping
effect."

"She does look rather-fugitive," Verrian agreed, staring too.

"One might almost fancy--an asylum."

"Yes, or a hospital."

They continued both to stare at her, helpless for what ever different
reasons to take their eyes away, and they were still interested in her
when they heard her asking the conductor, "Must I change and take another
train before we get to Belford? My friends thought--"

"No, this train stops at Southfield," the conductor answered, absently
biting several holes into her drawing-room ticket.

"Can she be one of us?" Miss Macroyd demanded, in a dramatic whisper.

"She might be anything," Verrian returned, trying instantly, with a whir
of his inventive machinery, to phrase her. He made a sort of luxurious
failure of it, and rested content with her face, which showed itself now
in profile and now fronted him in full, and now was restless and now
subsided in a look of delicate exhaustion. He would have said, if he
would have said anything absolute, that she was a person who had
something on her mind; at instants she had that hunted air, passing at
other instants into that air of escape. He discussed these appearances
with Miss Macroyd, but found her too frankly disputatious; and she
laughed too much and too loud.