The newly made widow leaned against the berth where the dead man lay with his face hidden beneath the sheet, her face in her hands, sobbing in a subdued but heart-broken way. None of the other berths had been made up yet, and the few men in the car looked solemn and ill at ease. A gayly dressed mulatto woman, evidently the lady's maid, was whispering to the smart yellow porter. Geraldine paused by the weeping woman with a timid glance that took in every detail of her appearance--the elegant curves of the stately figure in a fine cloth traveling gown, the glint of golden hair beneath the dark, close hat, the glittering rings on the hands that held the handkerchief to her face. She whispered, shyly, to Standish: "She is one of those grand aristocrats that I used to see at O'Neill's store. I'm afraid to speak to her. Some of them are so proud, so haughty, they can wither you with a look." "Suppose we go back, then, to our seats," he returned, eagerly. But something held Geraldine by the mourner's side, in spite of her terror of proud, rich women; and as a sudden low sob broke on the air, she started hurriedly forward with a gentle touch on the lady's arm, bending her face down to whisper, brokenly, out of the wealth of her sympathy: "Oh, I am so sorry for you, I am so sorry for you! May God help you to bear it!" The mourner lifted up a lovely face framed in golden hair--the face of a woman somewhere between thirty and forty--and met the glance of those sweet brown eyes swimming in sympathetic tears, and her heart seemed to answer the girl's words. With another heart-breaking sob, she dropped her face against Geraldine's shoulder, and let the girlish arms infold her like a daughter's clasp. "Come away to a seat," she whispered, and led her away some distance from the berth. Sitting side by side, they mingled their tears together, for it seemed to Geraldine as if she could feel, by some divine instinct, all the force of the other woman's grief. "For what, if I were married to my darling Harry, and Death took him--oh, it would break my heart!" she thought, wildly. Standish had followed and taken a seat just behind her, where he could listen to every word that passed. Oh, how she hated him for his dastardly espionage, but she dared not openly revolt. She bided her time. She felt with a keen thrill of pleasure how the strange lady clung to her in the abandonment of her grief, nestling her weary head so confidingly against her shoulder, and letting her arm rest around the girl's waist. "Tell me if there is anything I can do for you," she whispered, kindly, and the mourner hushed her sobs and murmured: "Tell the conductor to make arrangements to take--take--my poor husband through to Chicago, our home." Standish beckoned the conductor back to the seat, and there was a colloquy for some time over mournful details. When he went away, the lady who had grown calmer, lifted her tearful face, and looked at Geraldine, eagerly, tenderly.