Of the ceremonies attending her departure, the one that cost her most was the kiss she felt bound to offer Agatha.  She had been jealous of her at college, where she had esteemed herself the better bred of the two; but that opinion had hardly consoled her for Agatha’s superior quickness of wit, dexterity of hand, audacity, aptness of resource, capacity for forming or following intricate associations of ideas, and consequent power to dazzle others.  Her jealousy of these qualities was now barbed by the knowledge that they were much nearer akin than her own to those of Trefusis.  It mattered little to her how she appeared to herself in comparison with Agatha.  But it mattered the whole world (she thought) that she must appear to Trefusis so slow, stiff, cold, and studied, and that she had no means to make him understand that she was not really so.  For she would not admit the justice of impressions made by what she did not intend to do, however habitually she did it.  She had a theory that she was not herself, but what she would have liked to be.  As to the one quality in which she had always felt superior to Agatha, and which she called “good breeding,” Trefusis had so far destroyed her conceit in that, that she was beginning to doubt whether it was not her cardinal defect.

She could not bring herself to utter a word as she embraced her schoolfellow; and Agatha was tongue-tied too.  But there was much remorseful tenderness in the feelings that choked them.  Their silence would have been awkward but for the loquacity of Jane, who talked enough for all three.  Sir Charles was without, in the trap, waiting to drive Gertrude to the station.  Erskine intercepted her in the hall as she passed out, told her that he should be desolate when she was gone, and begged her to remember him, a simple petition which moved her a little, and caused her to note that his dark eyes had a pleading eloquence which she had observed before in the kangaroos at the Zoological Society’s gardens.

On the way to the train Sir Charles worried the horse in order to be excused from conversation on the sore subject of his guest’s sudden departure.  He had made a few remarks on the skittishness of young ponies, and on the weather, and that was all until they reached the station, a pretty building standing in the open country, with a view of the river from the platform.  There were two flies waiting, two porters, a bookstall, and a refreshment room with a neglected beauty pining behind the bar.  Sir Charles waited in the booking office to purchase a ticket for Gertrude, who went through to the platform.  The first person she saw there was Trefusis, close beside her.

“I am going to town by this train, Gertrude,” he said quickly.  “Let me take charge of you.  I have something to say, for I hear that some mischief has been made between us which must be stopped at once.  You—­”

Just then Sir Charles came out, and stood amazed to see them in conversation.