That such a fine young lady should be paying a visit
at any house whose owners did not send an equipage to attend her coming,
struck him as unusual. The brougham from the "Crown," though a decent
country town vehicle, seemed inadequate. Yet, there it stood drawn up
outside the station, and she went to it with the manner of a young lady
who had ordered its attendance and knew it would be there.
Wells felt a good deal of interest. Among the many young ladies who
descended from the first-class compartments and passed through the
little waiting-room on their way to the carriages of the gentry they
were going to visit, he did not know when a young lady had "caught his
eye," so to speak, as this one did. She was not exactly the kind of
young lady one would immediately class mentally as "a foreigner," but
the blue of her eyes was so deep, and her hair and eyelashes so dark,
that these things, combining themselves with a certain "way" she had,
made him feel her to be of a type unfamiliar to the region, at least.
He was struck, also, by the fact that the young lady had no maid with
her. The truth was that Bettina had purposely left her maid in town. If
awkward things occurred, the presence of an attendant would be a sort
of complication.
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