Well!--Polly really did not know what to think. She was not quite happy herself. From time to time, as her look dwelt on Laura, she was conscious of certain guilty reserves and concealments in her own breast. She wished Hubert had more sense--she hoped to goodness it would all go off nicely! But of course it would. Polly was an optimist and took all things simply. Her anxieties for Laura did not long resist the mere pleasure of the journey and the trip, the flatteries of expectation. What a very respectable and, on the whole, good-looking young man was Mr. Seaton! Polly had met him first at the Browhead dance; so that what was a mere black and ugly spot in Laura's memory shone rosy-red in her cousin's. Meanwhile Laura, mainly to avoid Polly's conversation, was looking hard out of window. They were running along the southern shore of a great estuary. Behind the loitering train rose the hills they had just left, the hills that sheltered the stream and the woods of Bannisdale. That rich, dark patch beneath the further brow was the wood in which the house stood. To the north, across the bay, ran the line of high mountains, a dim paradise of sunny slopes and steeps, under the keenest and brightest of skies--blue ramparts from which the gently opening valleys flowed downwards, one beside the other, to the estuary and the sea. Not that the great plunging sea itself was much to be seen as yet. Immediately beyond the railway line stretched leagues of firm reddish sand, pierced by the innumerable channels of the Greet. The sun lay hot and dazzling on the wide flat surfaces, on the flocks of gulls, on the pools of clear water. The window was open, and through the June heat swept a sharp, salt breath. Laura, however, felt none of the physical exhilaration that as a rule overflowed in her so readily. Was it because the Bannisdale Woods were still visible? What made the significance of that dark patch to the girl's restless eye? She came back to it again and again. It was like a flag, round which a hundred warring thoughts had come to gather. Why? Were not she and Mr. Helbeck on the best of terms? Was not Augustina quite pleased--quite content? "I always knew, my dear Laura, that you and Alan would get on, in time. Why, anyone could get on with Alan--he's so kind!" When these things were said, Laura generally laughed. She did not remind Mrs. Fountain that she, at one time of her existence, had not found it particularly easy and simple to "get on with Alan"; but the girl did once allow herself the retort--"It's not so easy to quarrel, is it, when you don't see a person from week's end to week's end?" "Week's end to week's end?" Mrs. Fountain repeated vaguely. "Yes--Alan is away a great deal--people trust him so much--he has so much business."