Therefore they accidentally meet.' Now Paula had distinctly heard Somerset declare that he was going to walk there; how then could she say this so coolly?
It was with a pang at his heart that he returned to his old thought of her being possibly a finished coquette and dissembler.

Whatever she might be, she was not a creature starched very stiffly by Puritanism.
Somerset looked down on the mouth of the tunnel.

The popular commonplace that science, steam, and travel must always be unromantic and hideous, was not proven at this spot.

On either slope of the deep cutting, green with long grass, grew drooping young trees of ash, beech, and other flexible varieties, their foliage almost concealing the actual railway which ran along the bottom, its thin steel rails gleaming like silver threads in the depths.

The vertical front of the tunnel, faced with brick that had once been red, was now weather-stained, lichened, and mossed over in harmonious rusty-browns, pearly greys, and neutral greens, at the very base appearing a little blue-black spot like a mouse-hole--the tunnel's mouth.
The carriage was drawn up quite close to the wood railing, and Paula was looking down at the same time with him; but he made no remark to her.
Mrs.Goodman broke the silence by saying, 'If it were not a railway we should call it a lovely dell.' Somerset agreed with her, adding that it was so charming that he felt inclined to go down.
'If you do, perhaps Miss Power will order you up again, as a trespasser,' said Charlotte De Stancy.