For an instant, he paused, moved to take the chair beside her; but the next two seats were vacant, and he had no excuse for intruding.

Arranging his grips, he quickly seated himself next to the window; and again, with eager interest, turned toward the woman in the chair ahead.

Involuntarily, he started with astonishment and pity.
The woman--still gazing from the window at the distant mountain peaks, and seemingly unconscious of her surroundings--presented now, to the man's shocked and compassionate gaze, the other side of her face.

It was hideously disfigured by a great scar that--covering the entire cheek and neck--distorted the corner of the mouth, drew down the lower lid of the eye, and twisted her features into an ugly caricature.

Even the ear, half hidden under the soft, gray-threaded hair, had not escaped, but was deformed by the same dreadful agent that had wrought such ruin to one of the loveliest countenances the man had ever looked upon.
When the train stopped at Fairlands, and the passengers crowded into the aisle to make their way out, of the characters belonging to my story, the woman with the man and his daughter went first.