Past the low-windowed shops, where the sleepy 'prentice-boys were taking down the shutters, and indulging in such fragmentary conversation as could be carried on under the eyes of their masters, which they knew were bent upon them from the upper rooms; past the neat little post-office, where the click of the telegraph-needles was already audible, and whence were issuing the sturdy country post-men, each with his huge well-filled leathern wallet on his back; past the yacht-builder's yard, where the air was redolent of pitch and tar, and newly-chipped wood, where through the half-opened gates could be seen the slender, tapering masts of many yachts already laid up for the season in the creek, and where a vast amount of hammering and sawing and planing was, as the neighbours thought interminably, going on. Not but what the yacht-building yard is one of the great features of the place; for, were it not for the yacht-owners, who first come down to give orders about the building of their vessels; then pay a visit to see how their instructions are being carried out; and finally, finding the place comfortable, tolerably accessible, and not too dear, bring their wives and families, and make it their head-quarters for the yachting season, what stranger would ever come to Lymington? what occupants would be found for its lodging-houses and hotels? The clock struck seven as Pauline passed through the booking-office at the railway station, and stepped out on to the platform. She looked hastily round her in search for Tom Durham, but did not see him. A sudden chill fell upon her as the remembrance of her dream flashed across her mind. The next instant she was chiding herself for imagining that he would be there. There was yet half an hour before the arrival of the train by which they were to proceed to Weymouth; he would be tired by his long swim from the ship to the shore, his clothes would of course be saturated, and he would have to dry them; he would doubtless rest as long as he could in the place where he had found shelter, and only join her just in time to start. There was no doubt about his finding shelter somewhere; he was too clever not to do that; he was the cleverest man in all the world; it was for his talent she had chosen him from all the others years ago; it was for--and then Pauline's face fell, remembering that Tom Durham was as unscrupulous as he was clever, and that if this pale-faced woman were really anything to him, he would occupy his talent in arranging how and when to meet her in secret, in planning how to obtain farther sums of money from the old man whose messenger she had been.