"You'd better let me come with you, now, Miss Diana your Ladyship. . . ."
The latter only waved her hand in kind but firm dismissal.
"Go home and look after papa, Marney, and don't worry about me. I shall be back soon." As the train took a jump and finally fled from the station, leaving Marney far behind, she added thoughtfully, "I don't think!" and burst out laughing.
"Just as though I _would_ hurry back to frowsy old England the first time I've ever managed to get away from it on my own!"
The other girl looked at her with deep, reflective eyes.
"If you had been on your own as much as I have you wouldn't think it such a catch," she remarked, with a little dry smile.
"Oh, wouldn't I! I can't imagine anything more heavenly than having no relations in the world. It must be perfect paradise!"
"It's the paradise I have lived in for three years," said April Poole sombrely, "and any one who likes it can have it, and give me their hell instead."
"What!" cried Diana Vernilands, not sympathetic, but astounded and eager. She stared at the other with envious, avid eyes that filled and brightened at last with an amazing plan. It burst from her like a shell from a gun. "_Let's change places: I be you, and you be me!_"
April considered her, and being very weary of her own destiny, considered the plan also. But though she was as ardent as any one for flyaway schemes and fantastic adventure, this plan looked to her too Arabian-nightish altogether, and not likely to hold water for more than the length of the journey from Waterloo to Southampton.
"How can we? I am a poverty-stricken girl, going out to governess at the Cape. You, a peer's daughter, I suppose, who will be met on the boat and surrounded by every care and attention. . . ."
"Yes, surrounded!" Diana interrupted savagely. With sudden fury she tore off the little sable hat, flung it on the seat beside her and stabbed it viciously with a great pearl pin. "I'm sick of being surrounded! I wish to goodness I were Alexander Selkirk, shipwrecked on a desert island."
"That wouldn't be much fun, either," said April. "I don't think there is much fun anywhere. We have all got what we don't want, and want what we can't get."
"You couldn't _not_ want a face like yours," said Diana, handsomely. It gave her no pain, as has been mentioned before, because April was dark. If she had been addressing a blonde like herself, wild cats could not have torn such a compliment from Diana Vernilands.