nd on the platform with an elaborate affectation of being
utter strangers.

He had no paper to amuse him, for the station was not important enough
for a bookstall, and there was nothing to be seen out of the windows,
which were silvered with frozen moisture. He had the compartment to
himself, and lay back looking up rather sentimentally at the
bull's-eye, through which he heard occasional snatches of Dolly's
imperious treble.

'I know her name now,' he thought, with a quite unreasonable
joy--'Mabel. I shall remember that. I wonder if they are going all the
way to town, and if I could offer to be of any use to them at King's
Cross? At all events, I shall see her once more then.'

It was not a very long journey from Chigbourne to the terminus, but,
as will be seen hereafter, it was destined to be a land mark in the
lives of both Mark and Mabel, though the meeting he looked forward to
at the end of it never took place.

CHAPTER VII.

IN THE FOG.

Mark was roused from his reverie in the railway carriage by the fact
that the train, after slackening speed rather suddenly, had come to a
dead standstill. 'Surely we can't be in already,' he said to himself,
wondering at the way in which his thoughts had outstripped the time.
But on looking out he found that he was mistaken--they were certainly
not near the metropolis as yet, nor did they appear to have stopped at
any station, though from the blank white fog which reigned all around,
and drifted in curling wreaths through the window he had let down, it
was difficult to make very sure of this.

Along the whole length of the train conversation, no longer drowned by
the motion, rose and fell in a kind of drone, out of which occasional
scraps of talk from the nearer carriages were more distinctly audible,
until there came a general lull as each party gave way to the
temptation of listening to the other--for the dullest talk has an
extraordinary piquancy under these circumstances, either because the
speakers, being unseen, appeal to our imagination, or because they do
not suppose that they are being so generally overheard.

But by-and-by it seemed to be universally felt that the stoppage was
an unusual one, and windows went down with a clatter along the
carriages while heads were put out inquiringly. Every kind of voice
demanded to be told where they were, and why they were stopping, and
what the deuce the Company meant by it--inquiries met by a guard, who
walked sl