"Don't, in pity's sake, talk like this," she exclaimed. "Mistake? Who under the blue heavens doesn't make them – Certa! Haven't you, yourself, in spite of your moral, spotless life, haven't even you made them?"

"How," flushed the naïve gentleman, on the sudden betrayed into a mental frankness of self-approval near to conceit, "how does she know me so well?"

"Who is there," his companion gave him the question in a challenging tone "to tell each other and every one of us what is or will be a mistake in his life? Where were everyone's eyes when I married? – Why didn't someone tell me then that my marriage was a hideous mistake? As for the rest of it…" she turned away for a second towards the window, and Bulstrode saw how the hot blood had mounted and her eyes had changed when after a moment she came back to him again. She put out towards him a beseeching hand: "You above all men, who are faithful to an ideal, must not give me old platitudes!"

Bulstrode's head reeled. He felt like a man who after a narcotic finds his brain suddenly alight and real things grow strange. He wanted to rub his eyes. She appeared singularly to appreciate his daze.

"It is as strange to me as it is to you, to find myself here with a man to whom I have never spoken before – to be under his protection, and to talk with him like this; and yet I have seen you so often, I have watched you in the distance, and long since I singled you out as the one man in whom I could fancy confiding – the one man to whom I could give a sacred trust."

With these words the incognita drew herself up, and her manner, with amazing swiftness, changed from a childlike confidence to a dignity not without a certain rigidness, and as Bulstrode remarked this, he also noticed that she was very young, and he was conscious in her of a something he had never quite met in a woman before – an extreme dignity, an ultra poise, an assurance. – Who was she? – And whom did she take him to be? With every turn of the fast wheels of the express it was growing more difficult to explain. She would more keenly feel the fact that he had not cut her frankness short – he had no right to her confidences even though she took their mutual knowledge of each other for granted.

"When," he ventured it delicately – "did you last see me?" It was bold, but it did perfectly.

"Oh, an age ago, isn't it? You were last on the Continent I think in August at Trouville, during La Grande Semaine."

Ah, he reflected, of course! That was where, amongst so many other celebrities and beauties, she had attracted his attention. But his rapid mental calculations of those seven days could reveal to him no woman's face but one. He found himself even in this unique moment recalling the time following hard on Molly's formal engagement to her Marquis … and those days were amongst the brightest in his life. No, there had been no foreign element at Trouville for him in the dazzle and freedom of that worldly fortnight – for Jimmy Bulstrode, in all the scene she summoned up, there was but one woman. He came back with a start to the other.

"Then yesterday, as you passed our table at the Carlton, and it seemed as if heaven had sent you to us to help us – at least so we both felt."

And Bulstrode doubtfully smiled and, now determined, broke in, or would have done so, but she waved him imperiously.

"Your mind," she spoke indulgently, "is on the wrong side to-day. Try to think only of the happiness towards which I am going so rapidly, so rapidly." Then, as she with her word glanced out of the window, she cried: "Oh, what if something should happen to the train – what if some horrible delay – "

And he shook himself to action.

"My dear lady," he began gravely, "you must hear me. You have made and are making a great mistake. I am certainly not the man…"

"I command you, sir," she flashed out at him – "surely you will not disobey me – you will not make me think as well that I am making a mistake in you."

"Ah, but that," he gasped, and caught her words gratefully, "is just the point."

She smiled. "Please…! Let me judge! Only don't condemn me. Only be glad you can so marvellously help a human soul to happiness – can so generously lend yourself for these few hours to aid in my escape."

She was escaping! Well, he had nearly guessed it! The new luggage alone was an indication. Unless her mania was for taking strangers to be intimate friends, she wasn't fleeing a madhouse! From what did she so determinedly run? – and how in heaven's name was he helping her? Did she think he was going to marry her? Into what tangle had the man he was unwittingly impersonating got himself – and in default of his appearing on the scene in what would his absence involve poor Bulstrode?

He took off his hat and put it down on the seat – thus his fine head was fully revealed to the lady's view.

"I do not know you," he said determinedly. "You do not know me, but you seem bent on not acknowledging this fact or permitting me to state it."

But even this plain statement did him no good, for she said, quite agreeing with him:

"If I had ever spoken with you – been near you before, I would not be here now. You see it is just your impersonality– your having no connection with anything in my life that makes it possible! But why," she exclaimed impatiently, "do you spend these few hours with me in this meaningless warfare? You should, it seems, take the honor more graciously, and since you are here, have consented to be here, show me a little kindness. Since, after all, willingly or not, you are in effect nobly helping me to do what I am doing."

And this brought him wonderfully up to the question of what was he doing? What was he supposed to be furthering here? It was his expression, no doubt, that made her ask with curious aptness: "Just how much do you know?"

The poor gentleman threw out his hands desperately. "You can't think how in the dark I am! How beyond words mystified."

"How droll!" she laughed sweetly, "and how amusing and all the more beautiful and like you, to be, in spite of yourself, here. You see we have switched off – just as you said we would do."

So they had indeed: they had stopped, and the fact fetched him to his feet. He looked out: it was a fast express, a through train – the first stop should have been Westboro' Abbey.

"Yes, we're switched off!" she cried delightedly, "as you know: as you arranged so cleverly! – and the Westboro' people will go on without us."

Would they indeed! Lucky people, but not if he could prevent it. But his attention to the train's procedure had come too late.

He opened the window and looked out. They stood at the side of a switch some three hundred yards above a small squat station, and in the far distance Bulstrode could see the end of a disappearing train. He drew in his head and quietly asked his companion:

"What has happened to us, do you know?"

She laughed deliciously. "Know? Why, of course, I do. You're delightful! Of course I have followed every step of the plan – the special for Dover picks us up here in three-quarters of an hour, doesn't it? We make the boat for Calais, and there Gela meets me and your mission is done!"

The gentleman opposite her listened quietly, and before speaking waited a second, staring down at her, his hands in his pockets: there they touched a little coin which he always carried: a coin that opened at a sacred point to discover to his eyes alone a picture of a woman as lovely as this woman, as human, and one whom he had good cause to suppose loved another man than her husband. The woman opposite him was escaping from her husband. That was what she was doing! He who had striven for fifteen years to prevent the like in the life of the one woman of all, now appeared to be helping this poor thing to the same thing. He did not believe he was to be waylaid and robbed, or that any trick had been played upon him. The only thing he did not believe was that the woman knew him! Before, however, brushing the delusion aside, he asked, his candid eyes upon her: "And my mission being so done, what then becomes of you?"

The shrug of her shoulders was neither an indication of indifference nor a pretty desperation! it rather was a relinquishing of herself wholly to Fate – an abandon.

"What becomes of a happy woman who goes with the man she loves?"

"Her Fate," said her companion, "has no single history. She is most often disillusioned, many times tragic, and always disgraceful."

"Ah, hush," she said angrily, "you presume too far. If you only intended to lecture me – to condemn me – why did you come?"

At this sincerely humorous challenge Bulstrode smiled.

"I did not, to be quite accurate, come," he said, "and I assure you I am here against my will. You refuse to listen to me; you turn my efforts to put things straight against me – and now."

The handsome creature gave him a flash from angry eyes.

"Your Excellency is scarcely polite. But I understand. Even my rank doesn't protect me: and although your old friendship for Gela did overcome your scruples, and our letters did touch you – still we should have remembered that you are, above all else, the King's friend."

Bulstrode fell a step back. Before he could take in the curious honors that were being thrust upon him, the lady went hotly on:

"You know how indulgent of me the King has been: how he adores me still, how blind he is, and you pity him and have no mercy for me."

Here, for she, too, had left her seat, she went over to the compartment window and turning her back full on Bulstrode, stood looking out, and she thus gave him time and he took it, not to consider his part of the affair, but, as if it had been suddenly revealed to him by her words, the woman's part in it. After all it was scarcely important whom, in error, she believed him to be. In a strange fashion, through some trick of resemblance, he was here and in her confidence in another's stead – impersonating some man who, in spite of the reputation for goodness and honor accredited him by this lady, would scarcely, Bulstrode felt confident, be as scrupulous regarding the adventure as he himself was fast becoming. The woman – the woman was all that mattered. She was a Queen then? A Queen! And he had so naïvely ignored her perquisites, been so innocently guilty of lèse-majesté– that she, poor thing, attributed his sans gêne to her fallen state!

Kings and Queens, poor dears, how human they are! What royalty could she be? And what King's friend was he so closely supposed to be? The King's friend – well, so he was – so he must be in spite of his quick pity for the lovely creature – in spite of chivalry and the trust she displayed. But to be practical: what in half an hour could he hope to accomplish – how could he keep a determined woman from wrecking her life?

His mind flew to Paddington, and his first sight of the lady on the platform. There had been near the hour two trains for Westboro', one of them a local which left London some few minutes later than the Western express. That later train, no doubt of it, would fetch the real accomplice to the eloping lady. Bulstrode argued that, should he declare himself to the Queen at this point for a total stranger, the revelation would plunge her in despair, anger and frighten her, and lose him his cause – There was, in view of the cause, he now felt and nerved himself to the deception, nothing to do but to assume his rôle in earnest and play it as well as he might. He had never sat alone in a travelling carriage and hobnobbed with a Queen, but he gracefully made his try at the proper address: "Your Majesty," he began, and she whirled quickly round, pleasure on her face.

"Oh, Gresthaven!" she exclaimed with touching gratitude, extending her hand. "Thanks, mon ami! I shall not have my title long, and I shall, I suppose, miss it with other things."

Bulstrode, with her naming of him, knew at length who he was, and recalled his supposed likeness to a certain Lord Almouth Gresthaven – famous explorer, traveller and diplomat, cosmopolitan in his tastes and a dabbler in the politics of other and less significant countries than his own. In accepting his new personality, the American winced a little as he bowed over the royal little hand and kissed it.

"Your Majesty will miss many things indeed," he said gravely – "your kingdom, your people, and the King – the King," he repeated, dwelling on the word, "who, as you say, loves you."

"My good friend," the lady made a little moue– "I know everything you would say. You can't suppose I haven't thought of it all? To be so far on my way must I not have carefully considered every step? One is, after all, a woman – and I am a woman in love."

"One word then," pleaded her unwilling imposter – "one word. Have you also asked yourself: what chance for happiness a woman can possibly hope for with a man who allows her to make the sacrifice you are about to make?"

If his words were straws before the wind to the woman, his simplicity was impressive to her. "It has seemed to me," Jimmy Bulstrode said, "that there is a great distinction between love and passion – and that however great his passion for her, a man should supremely —supremely love the woman he singles out of all the world."

The Queen of Poltavia looked at the gentleman before her, who stood very straight, his head alone bent, his clear fine eyes fixed upon her own.

"Love!" she repeated softly, "how well you say the word."

A slight flush stole up the American's cheek.

"Supreme love," he ventured to continue, "means protection to the woman…"

Here the Queen made an impatient gesture as though she shook away the impression his tone made.

"My dear Gresthaven," she exclaimed, "love means above all else happiness! One is happy with one person and miserable with another. It's all a lottery and unless our plans miscarry I am going towards the greatest happiness in the world. But come" – She altered her tone to one of practical command – "Let us address ourselves to our flight. You have your train schedule of course? The Dover train is due here at 4:50 and it only waits for the taking on of our carriage." As she looked up at him she saw the trouble in his face, and a solicitude for her to which she was unaccustomed.

"Mon cher ami," she said quizzically, "what, may I ask, since your scruples are so great, ever led you to accept this mission…?"

"Frankly," he eagerly answered, and was honest in it, "the hope, the desire that I might…"

"Persuade a woman in love against her heart?" she smiled, and so sweetly, so convincingly, and so reasonably, he was for an instant all on her side.

"I see my folly, your Majesty."

"There's nothing but force majeure, Gresthaven…"

"Yes" … he admitted reluctantly. "Let me go out now and see to our manoeuvres here." He was able to open the door which a passing guard had unlocked unobserved…

The innocent royalty let him pass, thanking him with a smile, and saw him go down the track toward the little squat station, with the guards.

Bulstrode, whose mind as he walked along was busy with train schedules, recalled, nevertheless, the Duke's letter, which he still had in his letter case, and he took it from his pocket and re-read it.

"… We are to have over the week-end a dash of royalty. Carmen-Magda, the Queen of the petty kingdom of Poltavia." (This mention of the Westboro' guests had quite escaped Bulstrode's mind in his contemplation of the last page of the Duke's note… "We are to have a compatriot of your own, a Mrs. Jack Falconer.") And royalty being very relative to the unsnobbish American, he had simply transferred the title (with possibly a possessive pronoun before it) to the other lady! He smiled as he reflected that the Westboro' express was destined to arrive at the Abbey without either the royal guest or Mr. James Thatcher Bulstrode. But more to the point, more instantly absorbing was the fact, that within ten minutes the slow train from London to Westboro' would arrive at Radleigh Bucks, the little station before which he now stood, and from it, undoubtedly, would descend the real Lord Gresthaven. If Jimmy needed encouragement in his self-imposed rôle of Master of Fate, if he needed to forget the ardor and the determination of the little Queen, if he needed to forget how, in youth, he had cordially hated those interfering people who, on horseback and in chaises, tore after flying lovers to waylay them at Gretna Green – he found his stimulus in recalling that he was "the King's friend."

"It's after all something of a distinction," he mused, entertained by the idea, "a sort of royal noblesse oblige– and since the poor dear herself has so made me out to be, given King the precedence, how could I, in the cause of gallantry, have proceeded otherwise! It's this diabolical little brown chrysanthemum," he mentally laid the fault there. "It is evidently a telling mark. People in books are always meeting unknowns who are to wear a red flower in the right lapel of the coat"… and he had unintentionally gone over into a romance – and his triste part in it was that of an unsympathetic spoiler of a romance.

As after a prolonged parley with the station officials he walked leisurely back to his carriage, his wallet grown very thin indeed and his honest heart suffering many sincere pangs at the contemplation of his conduct altogether, he argued: "She is absurdly young – she will, after a little, go back to her allegiance (he put it so), and I don't take much stock in that barbaric Gela anyway, he probably is a Hungarian band-master or a handsome ticket-agent, a plebian creature whose very remoteness from her own life has fascinated her."

Bulstrode, not quite sure just whom he was supposed to be by the train people, found himself bowed and escorted back to the carriage which had been turned and manipulated and side-tracked – reswitched and displaced, till even its own locomotive and train of cars would have been at a loss to find it. He had the sense of being a traitor, brute, imposter, and Providence all in one – which combination of qualities was sufficient to explain his embarrassment and his nervous manner when he at length rejoined the Queen.

There was a slight transformation in the lady whose dressing bag had aided, evidently, a brisk toilet. Under her chin flowered out a snowy bow of tulle, and she had swathed herself in the thick veil she had worn when first boarding the train. Indicating her disguise to Bulstrode, she said with her pretty accent: "I think it well to be thus." And he agreed that it was well.

His own agitation as the other train rushed in, slowed and halted, was scarcely less than hers, indeed perhaps greater, for Carmen-Magda, pale and quiet, her handsome brown eyes fixed on the window-pane, gave no sign of life, until after a series of jerks, jolts and bumps, they slowly but certainly became part of a moving train, once more undertaking its journey. Then Bulstrode, who stood determinedly in the window, filled it up on the station side, giving her no chance to look out had she wished to do so, nor did he think it needful to tell the Queen what he saw: A distinguished-looking man in rough brown clothes, and oh, the curious coincidence: a reddish-brown chrysanthemum in his buttonhole. His Striking Resemblance was accompanied by another gentleman – short and stout with military mustaches, and swarthy complexion. The two men were gesticulating wildly together, and as the train pulled away from them, Bulstrode turned about and faced the little Queen.

She had again lifted her veil, and he thought her pallor natural; in the momentary excitement her large eyes were fastened upon him with a touching confidence that nearly made the soft-hearted imposter regret the boldest act of his history.

"Are you sure," she asked him softly, "that this is the right train?"

The coquetry of her bow of snowy tulle, the debonnaire costume of brown and green, her gray hat with its feathers, were pathetic to him – her attire contrasted sadly with her pale face. She was to him like a wilful child. Not more, he decided for the sixth time, than twenty years old. She was like a paper queen out of a child's fairy book, all but her anxious face. "She regrets," he joyfully caught at the thought to arm himself and give himself right. "Poor little thing, she already regrets."

Leaning forward, he suggested kindly:

"Can't your Majesty rest a little?"

As he spoke the hypocrite knew that in less time than it would take to settle her they would bump into the station at Westboro' Abbey.

But Carmen-Magda made no sign of recalcitrancy or regret that she was en route for her plebian Gela. She leaned over and picked up one of the illustrated papers upon the seat and idly turned over the pages, reverting finally back to the frontispiece where a colored photograph displayed a young woman in hunting dress leaning on the arm of a military-looking gentleman with black mustaches and swarthy skin. She held it out to Bulstrode and said:

"It's a poor enough picture of me, but excellent, isn't it, of the King?"

Bulstrode looked at it attentively with an inscrutable illumination on his face.

"Yes, it is good of the King, very good indeed," he exclaimed with much animation. It was strikingly so, he could with truth say it.

Gresthaven had proved himself to be the friend of the King par excellence – the King seemed to have many friends – and the poor little woman opposite – with her fetching bow of tulle and her mad confidence in a stranger – her madder confidence in Lord Almouth Gresthaven – where were her friends? Jimmy leaned to her, and Mrs. Falconer could have told that it was his voice of goodness that spoke, the voice "that Jimmy seemed able to call at will from some wonderfully dear part of his nature: it was for people in trouble, for people he was determined to help in spite of themselves."

"Your Majesty has done me great honor," Bulstrode said. "You have said I was the King's friend, I should like instead to be your friend. Women need friends … even queens. Would it be too vast a presumption if I should from henceforth feel myself to be…" He waited and dared – "Carmen-Magda's friend?"

His innocent lèse-majesté, coupled with the tone he used, reached the woman in her – not to speak of his personal charm.

"Didn't I imply friendship when I chose you for this mission?" she said.

He winced. "Of course – but I mean from now on – "

She nodded sweetly. "Cela va sans dire, Gresthaven."

"Don't call me so," he interrupted, "say friend, to please me."

She laughed.

"You are too amusing. I will say it for you then in Poltavian. It's a sacred word with us," and she called him friend in her own tongue with the prettiest accent and a royal inclination of her head as if she knighted him. It cut him and pleased him at once, and he hurried to ask her:

"What would you think of Gresthaven if, instead of meeting you, as you had arranged he should do – he should betray you – should have warned your husband and have gone so far as to fetch the King to waylay you and stop your flight!"

But Carmen-Magda only laughed, and dismissed the ridiculous supposition with a word of disbelief.

"Tell me," Bulstrode urged, "tell me what would you think?"

She drew herself up haughtily at his insistence as if his hypothesis were real to her at last:

"He would be the most despicable traitor in the world."

Bulstrode pursued: "What – would you think of Gresthaven – if in order to save you, to give you time, time to think, to reflect, to perhaps alter your decision – he had used other means less cruel possibly, but as surely betraying your good faith?"

Here she looked keenly through him – read him – then waited a second before intensely exclaiming:

"Gresthaven —what have you done?"

His heart came into his throat and his voice nearly failed him. He did not know Poltavians nor the queenly temper, nor did he know how all women take any one given thing, but he knew how women the world over admit of no change of caprice saving that variability which arises in their own minds.

"Oh, dear," he thought, "if for no matter what reason, she had only changed her own mind!"

"In five minutes," he said bravely – "your Majesty will be at Westboro' Abbey station, our carriage has been attached to the other train which followed us from London."

With a smothered cry the Queen sprang to her feet, rushed to the window and stared out where nothing in the golden afternoon beauty revealed to her in what part of England she was. Bulstrode had put his hand out before her as if he feared she meditated climbing through the open window.

"Oh," she cried furiously, shrinking back from him, "how have you dared … dared?"

… "To save your Majesty? Well, it was hard!" he acknowledged practically. "Harder than you will ever believe. I may say that no decision was ever more difficult to make. To be so trusted by you, and to feel myself a double-dyed villain wasn't agreeable, but the issue was a warrant for any treachery."

"Great heavens!" she exclaimed. "Who made you judge of my actions, who gave you leave to decide my fate, what a fool I was to trust you – what a fool! You have spoiled my life!" she accused him – "You have taken from me everything in the world."

If she had been alone he knew she would have wept, and he kept his face turned from her for some few seconds. "I have certainly established a precedent for myself," he mused with humor. "I can never run away with a woman now – never."

Small as were the limits of the little carriage she found means to walk it up and down several times, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing. She spoke, he supposed, in Poltavian, for he could not follow the meaning of her few staccato, angry words, but he did not recognise among the incoherences that she called him friend!

As the flying scenes grew farm-like and pastoral, and the lines and sweep of what he took to be park property, caught his eyes he once more ventured to speak.

"I am not the cold-blooded traitor I seem, believe me," he tried to plead, "and until we definitely passed the station at Redleigh Bucks I was miserable to think I had, as it seems, betrayed your Majesty. But when as we came up to the station I saw the King on the platform – "

She stopped short in front of him: "The King!" she exclaimed incredulously.

Bulstrode nodded in a matter-of-fact way as if stray kings on mid-country platforms were the common occurrence of his travelling experiences.

"He had evidently followed you that far, and if the plan formed to attach your carriage to the Dover express had been attempted, you would have been stopped by your husband himself. As it is you are simply going where you are expected to go – to Westboro' Castle."

This dénouement, putting a summary end to her tragic anger, left her no place for ecstatics. She sat down in front of Bulstrode and repeated, dazed: —

"The King! The King had followed me! He had been warned then, but by whom? You above all did not…?"

"Oh no!" He was glad to be honestly able to disclaim at least this disloyalty. "I had nothing to do with it. The King had come on with the man who had played your Majesty false all along, the man who is indeed more the King's friend than he is Carmen-Magda's."

And sitting there, bewildered and appealing before him, she heard him say: "I mean Lord Almouth Gresthaven."

She murmured some words in Poltavian, then besought: "Why, why do you play with me?" The tears started to her eyes.

"Lord Gresthaven," Bulstrode hurried now to his confession – "has plainly betrayed you. Either he failed to meet you as planned, or else he came too late and thought better of his connivance against your husband – at all events, both he and the King took the slow train."

"But you," she interrupted, staring at him – "You are not Lord Gresthaven?"

"No," he said quietly, "no, I am an American, nothing more than a friend and guest of the Duke of Westboro'. I tried over and over again to tell you this, but you would not hear me and I finally accepted the rôle you gave me with the firm intention of taking you with me to Westboro' Castle. My name is James Thatcher Bulstrode, I am from Boston, in the United States." Bulstrode thus tardily introduced himself.

And Jimmy, not pretending ever to have counted greatly on the favor of princes, was nevertheless taken aback. Not that he had any preconceived notion of what Carmen-Magda would do – when she eventually knew. He had been too absorbed in his mission, its entanglements, and his climax. He may have been prepared for some exhibition of scorn, but he more than likely looked for a social and commonplace ending to their ride, but for what Carmen-Magda did he was entirely unprepared.

As if in his declaration of himself and his identity he had taken a sponge and quite wiped himself off the slate, the Queen, after speechlessly staring at him for a few moments, quietly removed her attention from him altogether. She took from a little bag at her wrist a rouge stick with which she carefully touched her lips; from a tiny gold box she lightly dusted her cheeks with powder; she adjusted her tulle bow and her veil and then sat serenely back waiting until the train should arrive at her forced destination.

Although, one might say, unused to the manners of royalty, Jimmy was dumbfounded; the beautiful woman in forest-brown clothes picked out with hunting green had become as strange to him as in the first moment when she attracted his attention some few miles beyond London. That she should be angry at his interference he could admit, but that she should not be grateful to be saved from her husband's wrath he did not understand. Was he too plebeian for her to notice? He, of course, did not speak to her again, nor did she break the singular silence, and for some reason he did not even care to ask her forgiveness. Finally, he decided that she was thinking solely of Gela, the man at the other end of the route who would wait for her in vain, and when this sentimental view of the case occurred to him, he would have felt de trop had he not seen how completely he was ignored.