It was a quiet, dreary, insignificant wayside station. A few men were lounging about--fisher-folk chiefly--and one woman. No, that could not be her cousin Rachel. During her life in London, Mona had often met an elderly lady whose dress was sufficiently eccentric to attract attention even in "blessed Bloomsbury." A short wincey skirt, a severely uncompromising cloth jacket, and a black mushroom hat, had formed a startling contrast to the frivolities in vogue; and, by some curious freak of fancy, a mental picture of this quaint old lady had always flashed into Mona's mind when she thought of her cousin. But the woman on the platform was not like that. Her face was ruddy and good-natured, and her dress was a hideous caricature of the fashion of the year before. Every picturesque puff and characteristic excrescence was burlesqued to the last point compatible with recognition. Mona might have met fifty such women in the street, and never have noticed their attire; but the hang of that skirt, the showiness of that bonnet, the general want of cut about every garment, as seen in that first momentary glance, were burnt into her recollection for a lifetime. "No doubt, the woman I used to meet in London was a duchess," she thought a little bitterly, "but this cannot be my cousin Rachel." She gave an order to the porter, alighted from the carriage, and waited--she scarcely knew for what. She was the only young woman who got out of the train there; so if Rachel Simpson were anywhere in sight, she must soon identify her cousin by a process of exclusion. And so she did. But she did it very slowly and deliberately, for Mona was looking rather impressive and alarming in her neat travelling dress, not at all unlike some of the young ladies who came to stay at the Towers. The train puffed away out of the station, and then the little woman came up with a curious, coy smile on her ruddy face, her head a little on one side, and an ill-gloved hand extended. Mona learned afterwards that this was her cousin's best company manner. "Miss Maclean?" she said half shyly, half familiarly. "Yes: I am Mona Maclean. I suppose you are my cousin Rachel?" They kissed each other, and then there was an awkward silence. Rachel Simpson was thinking involuntarily, with some satisfaction, that she had seen Mona in a third-class carriage. She herself usually travelled second, and the knowledge of this gave her a grateful and much-needed sense of superiority, as regarded that one particular. She wondered vaguely whether Mona would object to having been seen under such disadvantageous circumstances. "I suppose my luggage arrived about a fortnight ago?" said Mona, forcing herself to speak heartily. "You were kind enough to say you would give it house-room. What shall I do about this little valise?" "Oh, the man will bring it to-night. Bill," she said familiarly to the rough-looking porter, "mind and bring that little trunk when ye gang hame."