She was roused from the train of thought into which these resolutions had led her by the sudden stopping of the train, the throwing open of doors, and the inquiry for tickets. The midday was very chill and sunless, and a striking contrast to the bright May morning--twelve months, minus a day, before--when the village children strewed fresh roses in her path, and the jocund sun shone out so brightly on her bridal! John too had been, she recollected, a very different John in those days. The companion of that vividly-remembered wedding journey would not, she felt, have bustled her out so brusquely on the platform, and would have handled her small belongings with a far gentler hand. Life, however, is compounded amongst its countless atom-like events of so many contrasts, and so many memories of contrasts, that comparisons of the present are often as unsatisfactory as they are odious. “Non c’è maggior stupidità Che di recordarsi del tempo passato,” when the current of our lives is running roughly over scattered stones, and when we need our best wisdom, patience, and tact, to carry us safely through a perilous crisis. By an insignificant, but at the same time a somewhat singular, coincidence, the family from the Castle chanced to be in the same train, and in a carriage immediately behind that in which our travellers from Peartree-house had placed themselves. The fact of their near neighbourhood was patent to John: he was, however, in no mood to listen hat in hand, and with the old-fashioned show of respect--a remnant of the not wholly extinct feudal system which had descended to him from his grandsires--whilst Lady Millicent condescendingly acted the part of suzerain lady for his benefit. Hoping to evade altogether the notice of the mighty dame, John, after the fashion mutely objected to by his wife, hustled that young person in rather unseemly haste from the carriage. “Be quick,” he said, as he hurried her away to a cab. “Don’t look that way; her ladyship is there, with the young ladies, and I have no time for stopping if I am to go back by the next train.”