It may have entered their heads that he was standing guard over the repose of a fair accomplice.

They asked so many embarrassing and disconcerting questions that he was devoutly relieved when they passed on, still suspicious.
The train was late, and at five o'clock he was desperately combating an impulse to leave it at Strassburg, find lodging in a hotel, and then, refreshed, set out for London to have it out with the malevolent Medcroft.

The disembarking of the venerable mourners, however, restored him to a degree of his peace of mind.

After all, he reviewed, it would be cowardly and base to desert a trusting wife; he pictured her as asleep and securely confident in his stanchness.

No: he would have it out with Medcroft at some later day.
He was congratulating himself on the acquisition of a bed--although it might possess the odour of a bed of tuberoses--when all of his pleasant calculations were upset by the appearance of a German burgher and his family.