“You ought to have been with us coming up on the train,” she cried to Honora; “I thought surely we’d be put off.  We were playing bridge in the little room at the end of the car when the conductor came for our tickets.  Georgie had ’em in his pocket, but he told the man to go away, that he was the third vice-president of the road, and we were his friends.  The conductor asked him if he were Mr. Wheeler, or some such name, and Georgie said he was surprised he didn’t know him.  Well, the man stood there in the door, and Georgie picked up his hand and made it hearts—­or was it diamonds, Georgie?”

“Spades,” said that gentleman, promptly.

“At any rate,” Mrs. Rindge continued, “we all began to play, although we were ready to blow up with laughter, and after a while Georgie looked around and said, ‘What, are you there yet?’ My dear, you ought to have seen the conductor’s face!  He said it was his duty to establish Georgie’s identity, or something like that, and Georgie told him to get off at the next station and buy Waring’s Magazine—­was that it, Georgie?”

“How the deuce should I know?”

“Well, some such magazine.  Georgie said he’d find an article in it on the Railroad Kings and Princes of America, and that his picture, Georgie’s, was among the very first!” At this juncture in her narrative Mrs. Rindge shrieked with laughter, in which she was joined by Mrs. Kame and Hugh; and she pointed a forefinger across the table at Mr. Pembroke, who went on solemnly eating his dinner.  “Georgie gave him ten cents with which to buy the magazine,” she added a little hysterically.  “Well, there was a frightful row, and a lot of men came down to that end of the car, and we had to shut the door.  The conductor said the most outrageous things, and Georgie pretended to be very indignant, too, and gave him the tickets under protest.  He told Georgie he ought to be in an asylum for the criminally insane, and Georgie advised him to get a photograph album of the high officials of the railroad.  The conductor said Georgie’s picture was probably in the rogue’s gallery.  And we lost two packs of cards out of the window.”

Such had been the more innocent if eccentric diversions with which they had whiled away the time.  When dinner was ended, a renewal of the bridge game was proposed, for it had transpired at the dinner-table that Mrs. Rindge and Hugh had been partners all day, as a result of which there was a considerable balance in their favour.  This balance Mr. Pembroke was palpably anxious to wipe out, or at least to reduce.  But Mrs. Kame insisted that Honora should cut in, and the others supported her.

“We tried our best to get a man for you,” said Mrs. Rindge to Honora.  “Didn’t we, Abby?  But in the little time we had, it was impossible.  The only man we saw was Ned Carrington, and Hugh said he didn’t think you’d want him.”

“Hugh showed a rare perception,” said Honora.

Be it recorded that she smiled.  One course had been clear to her from the first, although she found it infinitely difficult to follow; she was determined, cost what it might, to carry through her part of the affair with dignity, but without stiffness.  This is not the place to dwell upon the tax to her strength.