Of course she might have missed it; there was no depending on its exact course; but she had seen it a hundred times before, and wondered unreasonably why she had not seen it now.

But she would not sit down to dinner, and paced up and down in her white dress, turning again and again to the window, listening to the soft rush of the trains, the faint hoots from the track, and the musical chords from the junction a mile away.

The lights were up by now, and the vast sweep of the towns looked like fairyland between the earthly light and the heavenly darkness.

Why did not Oliver come, or at least let her know why he did not?
Once she went upstairs, miserably anxious herself, to reassure the old lady, and found her again very drowsy.
"He is not come," she said.

"I dare say he may be kept in Paris." The old face on the pillow nodded and murmured, and Mabel went down again.