not answered him, she said: "It is because you are going home, perhaps,
that you think it fast."

"No, miss," he replied, "I'm going to market. They can't put on steam
too stiff for me when I'm bound on business."

Emilia found it impossible to fathom the sensations of the man, and their
common desire for speed bewildered her more. She was relieved when the
train was lightened of him. Soon the skirts of red vapour were visible,
and when the guard took poor Braintop's return-ticket from her petulant
hand, all of the journey that she bore in mind was the sight of a
butcher-boy in blue, with a red cap, mounted on a white horse, who rode
gallantly along a broad highroad, and for whom she had struck out some
tune to suit the measure of his gallop.

She accepted her capture by the Marinis more calmly than Merthyr had been
led to suppose. The butcher-boy's gallop kept her senses in motion for
many hours, and that reckless equestrian embodied the idea of the
vivifying pace from which she had dropped. He went slower and slower.
By degrees the tune grew dull, and jarred; and then Emilia looked out on
the cold grey skies of our autumn, the rain and the fogs, and roaring
London filled her ears. So had ended a dream, she thought. She would
stand at the window listening to street-organs, whose hideous discord and
clippings and drawls did not madden her, and whose suggestion of a lovely
tune rolled out no golden land to her. That treasure of her voice, to
which no one in the house made allusion, became indeed a buried treasure.

In the South-western suburb where the Marinis lived, plots of foliage
were to be seen, and there were lanes not so black but that they showed
the hues of the season. These led to the parks and to noble gardens.