By-and-by, the time came for the Pullman saloon to be transformed for the night into a regular sleeping-car.  All this was new to me, and I watched it with interest.  As soon as the beds were made up, I crept into my berth, and my new friend Elsie took her place on the sofa below me.  I lay awake long and thought over the situation.  The more I thought of it, the stranger it all seemed.  I tried hard to persuade myself I was running some great danger in accepting the Cheritons’ invitation.  Certainly, I had behaved with consummate imprudence.  Canada is a country, I said to myself, where they kidnap and murder well-to-do young Englishmen.  How much easier, then, to kidnap and murder a poor weak stray English girl!  I was entirely at the mercy of the Cheritons, that was clear:  and the Cheritons were Dr. Ivor’s friends.  As I thought all the circumstances over, the full folly of my own conduct came home to me more and more.  I had let these people suppose I was travelling under an assumed name.  I had let them know my ticket was not for Palmyra but for Kingston, where I didn’t mean to go.  I had told them I meant to change it at Sharbot Lake.  So they were aware that no one on earth but themselves had any idea where I had gone.  And I had further divulged to them the important fact that I had plenty of ready money in Bank of England notes!  I stood aghast at my own silliness.  But still, I did not distrust them.

No, I did not distrust them.  I felt I ought to be distrustful.  I felt it might be expected of me.  But they were so gentle-mannered and so sweet-natured, that I couldn’t distrust them.  I tried very hard, but distrust wouldn’t come to me.  That kind fellow Jack—­I thought of him, just so, as Jack already—­couldn’t hurt a fly, much less kill a woman.  It grieved me to think I would have to hurt his feelings.

For now that I came to look things squarely in the face in my berth by myself, I began to see how utterly impossible it would be for me after all to go and stop with the Cheritons.  How I could ever have dreamt it feasible I could hardly conceive.  I ought to have refused at once.  I ought to have been braver.  I ought to have said outright, “I’ll have nothing to do or say with anyone who is a friend or an acquaintance of Courtenay Ivor’s.”  And yet, to have said so would have been to give up the game for lost.  It would have been to proclaim that I had come out to Canada as Courtenay Ivor’s enemy.

I wasn’t fit, that was the fact, for my self-imposed task of private detective.

A good part of that night I lay awake in my berth, bitterly reproaching myself for having come on this wild-goose chase without the aid of a man—­an experienced officer.  Next morning, I rose and breakfasted in the car.  The Cheritons breakfasted with me, and, sad to say, seemed more charming than ever.  That good fellow Jack was so attentive and kind, I almost felt ashamed to have to refuse his hospitality; and as for Elsie, she couldn’t have treated me more nicely or cordially if she’d been my own sister.  It wasn’t what they said that touched my heart:  it was what they didn’t say or do—­their sweet, generous reticence.