Part 3

A jounce sent them flying towards each other; they collided and recoiled, regarding one another in breathless indignation.

"This is simply hideous!" said the young lady, seizing the door-handle.

"Please don't open that door!" he said. She tried to wrench it open; the handle stuck--or perhaps the strength had left her wrist. But it was not courage that failed, for she faced him, head held high, and--

"You coward!" she said.

Over his face a deep flush burned--and it was a good face, too--youthfully wilful, perhaps, with a firm, clean-cut chin and pleasant eyes.

"If I were a coward," he said, "I'd stop this cab and get out. I never faced anything that frightened me half as much as you do!"

She looked him straight in the eyes, one hand twisting at the knob.

"Don't you suppose that this mistake of mine is as humiliating and unwelcome to me as it is to you?" he said. "If you stop this cab it will ruin somebody's life. Not mine--if it were my own life, I wouldn't hesitate."

Her hand, still clasping the silver knob, suddenly fell limp.

"You say that you are in a hurry?" she asked, with dry lips.

"A desperate hurry," he replied.

"So am I," she said, bitterly; "and, thanks to your stupidity, I must make the journey without my brother!"

There was a silence, then she turned towards him again:

"Where do you imagine this cab is going?"

"It's going to Cortlandt Street--isn't it?" Suddenly the recollection came to him that it was her cab, and that he had only told the driver to drive fast.

The color left his face as he pressed it to the sleet-shot window. Fitful flickers of light, snow, darkness--that was all he could see.

He turned a haggard countenance on her; he was at her mercy. But there was nothing vindictive in her.

"I also am going to Cortlandt Street; you need not be alarmed," she said.

The color came back to his cheeks. "I suppose," he ventured, "that you are trying to catch the Eden Limited, as I am."

"Yes," she said, coldly; "my brother--" An expression of utter horror came into her face. "What on earth shall I do?" she cried; "my brother has my ticket and my purse!"

A lunge and a bounce sent them into momentary collision; a flare of light from a ferry lantern flashed in their faces; the cab stopped and a porter jerked open the door, crying:

"Eden Limited? You'd better hurry, lady. They're closin' the gates now."

They sprang out into the storm, she refusing his guiding arm.

"What am I to do?" she said, desperately. "I must go on that train, and I haven't a penny."

"It's all right; you'll take my sister's ticket," he said, hurriedly paying the cabman.

A porter seized their two valises from the box and dashed towards the ferry-house; they followed to the turnstile, where the tickets were clipped.

"Now we've got to run!" he said. And off they sped, slipped through the closing gates, and ran for the gang-plank, where their porter stood making frantic signs for them to hasten. It was a close connection, but they made it, to the unfeigned amusement of the passengers on deck.

"Sa-ay!" drawled a ferry-hand, giving an extra twist to the wheel as the chains came clanking in, "she puts the bunch on the blink f'r a looker. Hey?"