As we passed into the tunnel my mind lashed wildly about in search of explanations, the only one I could find being that Larry Strangways was kidnapping me. On arriving in Boston I might find myself confronted by a marriage license and a clergyman. If so, I said to myself, with an extraordinary thrill, there would be nothing for it but submission to this _force majeure_, though I had to admit that the averted head, the English traveling-cap, and the intervening ulster, walking-stick, and golf-clubs worked against my theory. I was dreaming in this way when the train emerged from the tunnel and stopped so briefly at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street that, considering it afterward, I concluded that the pause had been arranged for. It was just long enough for an odd little bundle of womanhood to be pulled and shoved on the car and thrown into the seat immediately in front of mine. I choose my verbs with care, since they give the effect produced on me. The little woman, who was swathed in black veils and clad in a long black shapeless coat, seemed not to act of her own volition and to be more dead than alive. The porter who had brought her in flung down her two or three bags and waited, significantly, though the train was already creeping its way onward. She was plainly unused to fending for herself, and only when, as a reminder, the man had touched his hat a second time did it occur to her what she had to do. Hastily unfastening a small bag, she pulled out a handful of money and thrust it at him. The man grinned and was gone, after which she sagged back helplessly into her seat, the satchel open in her lap. That dreadful suspicion which had smitten me earlier in the day came back again, but the new-comer was so stiflingly wrapped up that even I could not be sure. She reminded me of nothing so much as of the veiled Begum of Bhopal as she sat in the durbar with the other Indian potentates, her head done up in a bag, as seen in the pictures in the illustrated London papers. For a lady who wished to pass unperceived it was perfect--for every eye in the car was turned on her. I myself studied her, of course, searching for something to confirm my fears, but finding nothing I could take as convincing. For the matter of that, as she sat huddled in the enormous chair I could see little beyond a swathing of veils round a close-fitting hat and the folds of the long black coat. The easiest inference was that she might be some poor old thing whom her relatives were anxious to be rid of, which was, I think, the conclusion most of our neighbors drew. Speaking of neighbors, I had noticed that in spite of the disturbance caused by this curious entrance, Larry Strangways had not turned his head.