"I didn't know," he said, slowly. "But, thank God, I have met you. I dread to think of your fatigue, but you will be glad just to see him again--just to give him his last wish--won't you?" he said, pleadingly. "Here is the telegraph-office. Shall I do it for you?" "No, thank you. I--I must think how to word it. Please wait." She went in alone. As she took the pencil into her hands a low groan burst from her lips. The man writing in the next compartment turned round in astonishment. She controlled herself and began to write. There was no escape. She must submit; and all was over. She telegraphed to Warkworth, care of the Chef de Gare, at the Sceaux Station, and also to the country inn. "Have met Mr. Delafield by chance at Nord Station. Lord Lackington dying. Must return to-night. Where shall I write? Good-bye." When it was done she could hardly totter out of the office. Delafield made her take his arm. "You must have some food. Then I will go and get a sleeping-car for you to Calais. There will be no crowd to-night. At Calais I will look after you if you will allow me." "You are crossing to-night?" she said, vaguely. Her lips framed the words with difficulty. "Yes. I came over with my cousins yesterday." She asked nothing more. It did not occur to her to notice that he had no luggage, no bag, no rug, none of the paraphernalia of travel. In her despairing fatigue and misery she let him guide her as he would. He made her take some soup, then some coffee, all that she could make herself swallow. There was a dismal period of waiting, during which she was hardly conscious of where she was or of what was going on round her. Then she found herself in the sleeping-car, in a reserved compartment, alone. Once more the train moved through the night. The miles flew by--the miles that forever parted her from Warkworth. XIX The train was speeding through the forest country of Chantilly. A pale moon had risen, and beneath its light the straight forest roads, interminably long, stretched into the distance; the vaporous masses of young and budding trees hurried past the eye of the traveller; so, also, the white hamlets, already dark and silent; the stations with their lights and figures; the great wood-piles beside the line. Delafield, in his second-class carriage, sat sleepless and erect. The night was bitterly cold. He wore the light overcoat in which he had left the Hôtel du Rhin that afternoon for a stroll before dinner, and had no other wrap or covering. But he felt nothing, was conscious of nothing but the rushing current of his own thoughts. The events of the two preceding days, the meaning of them, the significance of his own action and its consequences--it was with these materials that his mind dealt perpetually, combining, interpreting, deducing, now in one way, now in another. His mood contained both excitement and dread. But with a main temper of calmness, courage, invincible determination, these elements did not at all interfere.