said, with a smile, trying to look as if I hadn't seen Lord Hendley pushing his way towards us through the crowd.
Captain Sewell's doubtless valuable reply was lost in a sudden commotion from behind. Lady Manifold had put her head—surmounted by the absurd straw hat—out of the carriage window, and was loudly declaring the necessity of sending off a telegram at once, before the train left. She wore a worried look.
'Quick, Marjory, get me a telegraph-form out of my dressing-bag,' she was saying.
Marjory reluctantly broke off her conversation with Mr. Lovelace and darted into the compartment. I called in after her.
'Lord Hendley will send it off,' I said, giving him a look of interrogation, and, woman-like, sending off the very man I most wanted to talk to.
'Delighted!' he murmured, but he looked anything but that as he went off with the hastily-written telegram and a sixpence. I could see him frown as he saw Charlie Danford greet me.
'Hullo!' called out that callow youth to me across a sea of heads as I stood for a moment on the steps of our compartment. 'Are you off by the Ducal train too?'
'What?' I asked, when he had managed to push his way nearer through the crowd. 'Why do you call this a Ducal train?'
'Oh, didn't you know?' he laughed, as he managed to circumvent Aunt Agatha's somewhat rotund figure, that was the last obstacle that stood
