THE LURKER IN THE RUINS
Aunt Julia smiled; she was in a good humour this morning.
"You must confess he is a remarkable man," she replied. "He looks quite vulgar at first, but really shows excellent qualities: well educated, very respectful—I begin to wonder how we ever obtained such a man."
"An unusual chance," said Owen dryly. Laura gave him a look full of ambiguity.
Gradually, as the heat grew stronger, their talk languished into a silence, drowsy and companionable. The train jolted northward over the glaring buff plain of Lower Siam,—once rice-fields, now split and parched surfaces of sheet-brick that wavered through tremendous heat—to where, on the horizon-line, scorched palms straggled along an invisible river. Sometimes—beside the garish box of a station, or by a clump of stunted rubber trees with glossy leaves shining, in the vast
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