The following afternoon he threw his evening papers and overcoat into a first-class carriage whilst the guard placed his valise and dressing-case in the rack.
As there had been several minutes to starting time, he had not immediately taken his seat, but had stood smoking by the side of his carriage. He might, and did, doubtless, pass with others of the well set-up, well-looking men travelling on that day, for an Englishman, but closer observation showed his attire to be distinguished by that personal note which marks the cosmopolitan whose taste has been more or less tempted by certain fantasies of other countries. Bulstrode's clothes were brown, his gloves, cravat, and boots all in the same color scheme--one mentions a man's dress only on rare occasions, as on this certain day one has been led to mention the weather. That a man is perfectly turned out should, like the weather, be taken for granted. Bulstrode on this day, travelling as he was towards a goal, towards the one person he wanted above all to see, had spent some unusual thought on his toilet. At all events, on passing a florist's in Piccadilly, after giving his order for flowers to be boxed and expressed to Westboro', he had selected a tiny reddish-brown chrysanthemum which now covered the button-hole of his coat's lapel; it created a distinctive scheme of color. In point of fact it caught the eye of the lady who, hurrying from the waiting-room towards the Westboro' express, caught sight of the American and started. It appeared as if she would speak to him, half advanced, thought better of it, and said to the guard, who was about to fasten a placard on the window of a carriage:
"Please---just a second--won't you, guard?"
The bell rang, and Bulstrode found himself helping the lady into his own compartment. The guard shut the door, which closed with the customary soft thick sound of a lock setting, and pasted over the window the exclusive and forbidding paper--RESERVED.
Then it was in his corner by the window, once chimney pots and suburbs left behind, that the traveller to Westboro' watched the landscape with the pale, transparent smoke from the little farms floating like veils across the golden atmosphere; the slow winding streams between low-bushed, rosy shores, and red-tinged thickets; the flocks of rooks across fields long harvested: the flocks of sheep on the gently swelling downs.