But if Mary had gone
on beyond Monte Carlo, he too would have gone on. Having plunged into
the adventure, for a pair of eyes, he was prepared to pursue it to the
end wherever the end might be, even if he missed the flying week and
broke an engagement with the bride and bridegroom. But it was luck that
she should be getting out at the place where he had meant to stop for
his own reasons.
He supposed, of course, that she was travelling with relatives or
friends. Although he had seen her mounting the steps of a _wagon lit_
apparently alone, this did not argue that some one who belonged to her
was not inside. And when, from the window of the train whence he leaned
at every station, he saw her again at Monte Carlo, she was surrounded by
a crowd. One of the ladies shoulder to shoulder with her might be a
mother or aunt, one of the men a father or uncle; and it had been the
same when he followed, just in time to see her get into the Hotel de
Paris omnibus. Already the vehicle was full. She was the last in. His
idea was that, being the youngest of her party, she had waited for them
to be placed before taking a seat herself.
He knew of her now, having examined the visitors' book at the Paris,
that she was "Miss M. Grant"; that the name was written in a very
pretty, rather old-fashioned hand; that after it came "London" in the
same writing. He was sure the name must be hers, because it was last on
the page before he wrote his own; and she had gone in last, after
everybody else, leaving the people she was with to do their name-signing
before her.
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