A little smile played for one instant about her lips, a soft, far-away look lingered in her dreaming eyes for just a moment--just the space of time it might take you to count twenty; she let her fancy carry her away--_where_? Ah, sweet and perilous reverie! too dear and too dangerous to be safely indulged in. Vera roused herself with a start, passing her hand across her brow as though to brush away the thoughts that would fain have lingered there. "Impossible!" she said aloud to herself, moving on again rapidly. "I must be a fool to stand here dreaming--I, whose fate is irrevocably fixed; and I would sooner die than alter it. The best match in the county, it is called. Well, so it is; and nothing less would satisfy me. But--but--I think I will see him once again, and wish him good-bye more kindly." CHAPTER XVI. "POOR WISDOM." No; vain, alas! the endeavour From bonds so sweet to sever, Poor Wisdom's chance against a glance Is now as weak as ever! Thos. Moore. The station at Sutton stood perched up above the village on a high embankment, upon which the railway crossed the valley from the hills that lay to the north to those that lay to the south of it. Up at the station it was always draughty and generally cold. To-day, this very early morning, about ten minutes before the first up train is due, it is not only cold and draughty, but it is also wet and foggy. A damp, white mist fills the valley below, and curls up the bare hill sides above; it hangs chillingly about the narrow, open shed on the up side of the station, covering the wooden bench within it with thick beads of moisture, so that no man dare safely sit down on it, and clinging coldly and penetratingly to the garments of a tall young lady in a long ulster and a thick veil, who is slowly walking up and down the platform. The solitary porter on duty eyes her inquiringly. "Going by the up train, Miss?" he says, touching his hat respectfully as he passes her. "No," says Vera, blushing hotly under the thick shelter of her veil, and then adds with that readiness of explanation to which persons who have a guilty conscience are prone, "I am only waiting to see somebody off." An uncalled-for piece of information which has only the effect of setting the bucolic mind of the local porter agog with curiosity and wonderment. Presently the few passengers for the early train begin to arrive; a couple of farmers going into the market town, a village girl in a smart bonnet, an old woman in a dirty red shawl, carrying a bundle; that is all. Maurice is very late. Vera remembers that he always puts off starting to catch a train till the very last minute. She stands waiting for him at the further end of the platform, as far away as she can from the knot of rustic passengers, with a beating heart and a fever of impatience within her.