So at eighteen years of age Clarissa Lovel's education was finished, and
she came home alone from a quiet little suburban village just outside
Paris, and having arrived to-night at the Great Northern Station, King's
Cross, had still a long journey before her.

Mr. Lovel lived near a small town called Holborough, in the depths of
Yorkshire; a dreary little town enough, but boasting several estates of
considerable importance in its neighbourhood. In days gone by, the Lovels
had been people of high standing in this northern region, and Clarissa had
yet to learn how far that standing was diminished.

She had been seated about five minutes in a comfortable corner of a
first-class carriage, with a thick shawl over her knees, and all her little
girlish trifles of books and travelling, bags gathered about her, and she
had begun to flatter herself with the pleasing fancy that she was to have
the compartment to herself for the first stage of the journey, perhaps for
the whole of the journey, when a porter flung open the door with a bustling
air, and a gentleman came in, with more travelling-rugs, canes, and
umbrellas, russia leather bags, and despatch boxes, than Clarissa had ever
before beheld a traveller encumbered with. He came into the carriage very
quietly, however, in spite of these impedimenta, arranged his belongings in
a methodical manner, and without the slightest inconvenience to Miss
Lovel, and then seated himself next the door, upon the farther side of the
carriage.

Clarissa looked at him rather anxiously, wondering whether they two were to
be solitary companions throughout the whole of that long night journey. She
had no prudish horror of such a position, only a natural girlish shyness in
the presence of a stranger.