‘Oh, do not say so,’ she said, ‘as if I had not been--happy too.’ And then they were both silent, clasping each other’s hands. ‘And we have not missed it after all,’ she added a moment after, with a quaver in her voice. Oswald kept silence with a horrible misgiving. He knew, though she did not, that this was not the train she thought, and for once he was sincerely shocked and alarmed by the position he found himself in. All the way along, as the carriage rolled through the darkening twilight at a pace which seemed slow and tedious to travellers accustomed to express speed, he was trying to turn over in his mind the best thing to do, looking at her returning confidence and ease with a sense of guilt and horrible anticipations. What was to be done? There was a hope that a train which must pass the junction might be stopped by signal if this lumbering little branch would only push on its feeble engine fast enough. But if not---- The perspiration came to his forehead in great drops. He had never before in his life been so confronted by the results of his own foolishness. He ought to have attended to all the symptoms of the waning afternoon; he ought to have listened to her appeal; he ought to have thought of something else than the pleasure of the moment, and a little lengthening out of the delightful day. Heretofore some happy chapter of accidents had always delivered Oswald from the penalty of his misdoings, or at the worst it had only been himself whom he had injured. But now the creature dearest to him in the world--the one whom he had chosen out of the world--was she to suffer for his foolishness? All that was manly in him was roused by the emergency. It may be supposed he was not a very entertaining companion during the long three-quarters of an hour which it took them to reach the junction. It was almost dark, the soft dark of a summer night, when they were landed upon the desolate little platform, the sole travellers. One or two languid porters about were evidently waiting with impatience till this last disturber of their repose was cleared away. The day, which had been so deliciously fresh and sweet on the water, had been very hot inland, and the world in general was languid and anxious to be quite still and at rest.