I don't know why, but we English people generally try to get an empty carriage, and feel annoyed when some one comes in to share our possession.

I, like the rest of my countrymen are apt to do in such a case, began to hope I might retain the entire use of the carriage, at least to Leeds, when the door opened, and a porter brought a number of wraps and shawls, evidently the property of a lady.
"Bother it!" I mentally exclaimed, "and so I suppose I am to have some fidgety old women for my travelling companions." The reader will imagine from this that I was not a lady's man.

At any rate, such was the case.

I had lived my thirty years without ever being in love; indeed, I had from principle avoided the society of ladies, that is, when they were of the flirtable or marriageable kind.
No sooner had the porter laid the articles mentioned on a corner seat, the one farthest away from me, than their owner entered, and my irritation vanished.

It was a young lady under the ordinary size, and, from what I could see of her, possessed of more than ordinary beauty.
Her skin was dark and clear, her eyes very dark, her mouth pleasant yet decided, her chin square and determined.