If she
had been put upon her trial for murder, the police reporters would have
discovered traces of great beauty in her countenance. An ordinary
spectator, having no occasion to spice a paragraph, would have made the
equivocal remark that she had once been handsomer.
This lady was dressed plainly, comfortably, and in good taste. Her
hands, ungloved, were shapely, but red and hard with manual labor. On
the second finger of the left hand was a little gold ring, much thinned
by wearing. The eyes of this lady were regarding the unconscious Marcus
obliquely, with a singular expression of mingled recollection and doubt.
Sometimes her glance would drop to the ring, as if that were a link in
the chain of her perplexed reflections. A sudden jolt of the car, as the
train ran over a pole which had fallen on the track, roused Marcus to
the existence of this face and those eyes.
As he saw the eyes sternly bent on him, he thought that his staring out
of the window, past the lady's profile, might have offended her. So,
with a cough which was meant to serve as an apology for the
unintentional rudeness, he turned his face away, and continued his
gloomy revery among the odd patterns of the oilcloth on the floor of
the aisle.
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