So he reasoned, or sought to reason, until the train slowed down at the station which held the solution of his hopes and fears.
It was a small wayside station at which he alighted--a mere hamlet set in the slumberous calm of English rural scenery, passed by express trains with a roar of derision by day and contemptuously winking tail-lights at night.

On the dark green background of the distant heights an eruption of new red bungalows threatened to spread and destroy the beauty of Charleswood at no remote date.

But at present the sylvan charm of the spot was unspoiled.

Its meadows and fields seemed to lie happily unconscious of the contagion flaming on the billowy hills.
The porter who emerged from a kind of wooden kennel and clattered up to Charles to collect his ticket, stared hard when the young man asked if Mrs.Pursill lived at Charleswood.

He appeared to give the matter deep thought before nodding affirmatively, and accompanied him to the station entrance to point out an old house lying behind a strip of white fence and a clump of dark-green trees half-way up a distant hill (not where the bungalows were cropping up, but in the opposite direction), with the intimation that it was the residence of the lady he was looking for.