"Must be a foreigner," declared Helen. "He's so well-bred!"
This, I have observed, is a favourite feminine fallacy, not to be exploded but by much continental travel in mixed society.
"Must be somebody!" chimed in Mrs. Lascelles. "I am sure I know his face. I think he drives a drag. I declare, Helen, I'll bow to him if I meet him anywhere about."
"So will I," said Helen; and forgot his existence forthwith.
Was she not even now in the same town with Frank Vanguard—treading the same pavement, breathing the same air (and smoke)?
"We'll have one turn for health in the Park," said Mrs. Lascelles, as the two ladies seated themselves in her open carriage. "You know you're in my charge to-day, Helen; and I mean to bring you out in what your papa calls the 'best possible form.' To-night, dear, I'm determined you shall win all your engagements!"
So her stout and florid coachman, shaving the kerbstone to an inch, turned under the Marble Arch at a liberal twelve miles an hour, which subsided into three before he reached Grosvenor Gate, and so, losing his identity in a double column of carriages, brilliant and glittering as his own, commenced the performance of that imposing function—grand, deliberate, and funereal—which is solemnised every lawful day in Hyde Park between six and half-past seven p.m. Barouches, sociables, tax-carts, Victorias, every kind of wheeled conveyance, were wedged three-deep in the road. All the chairs on the footway were occupied, and the path was blocked with walkers to the rails. Mounted policemen, making themselves ubiquitous, pranced about and gesticulated with unusual vehemence. Those on foot ferried passengers across the drive at intervals, majestically rebuking for that purpose the horse and his rider, the charioteer, and the foaming, highly-bitted animal he controlled.
It was once said of London by a visitor, I believe, from Dublin, that "you could not see the town for the houses." Here, in this high tide of humanity, you could not see the people for the crowd.
"Not a soul in the Park!" observed Mrs. Lascelles, languidly scanning the myriads that surrounded her.
"I can't think where they get to," said Helen. "Nobody ever seems to come here that one knows."