'It has not done her any harm,' I heard her observe, sotto voce. 'She certainly looks younger.'
I took advantage of a pause in Sara's chatter to ask after Jill. Aunt Philippa answered me, for Sara was bowing towards a passing carriage.
'Oh, poor child, she wanted to come with us to meet you, but it was Professor Hugel's afternoon. He teaches her German literature, you know. I was anxious for her not to miss his lesson, and she was very good about it. She is coming down to afternoon tea, and of course we shall see her in the evening.'
'Poor dear Jocelyn! she was longing to come, I know. You and Miss Gillespie are terribly severe,' observed Sara, with a light laugh. She was so free and gay herself that she rather pitied her young sister, condemned to the daily grind of lessons and hard work.
'Nonsense, Sara!' returned her mother sharply. 'We are not severe at all. Jocelyn knows that it is all for her good if Miss Gillespie keeps her to her task. My dear Ursula, we are all charmed with Miss Gillespie,—even Sara, though she pretends to call her strict and old-fashioned. She is a most amiable, ladylike woman, and Jocelyn is perfectly happy with her.
'I am very pleased with Jocelyn,' she went on. 'You have done her good, Ursula, and both her father and I are very grateful to you. She is not nearly so wayward and self-willed. She takes great pains with her lessons, and is most industrious. She is not so awkward, either, and Miss Gillespie thinks it will be a good plan if I take her out with me driving sometimes when Sara is married. I shall only have Jocelyn then,' finished Aunt Philippa, with a regretful look at her daughter. I was much interested in all they had to tell me, but I was not sorry when we entered the Park and the stream of talk died away.
I almost felt as though I were in a dream, as the moving kaleidoscope of horses and carriages and foot-passengers passed before my eyes.
Yesterday at this time I was sitting in poor Robert Lambert's whitewashed attic, listening to the sparrows that were twittering under the eaves. When I had left the cottage I had walked down country roads, meeting nothing but a donkey-cart and two tramps.
Now the sunshine was playing on the rhododendrons and on the green leaves of the trees in Hyde Park. A brass band had struck up in the distance. The riders were cantering up and down the Row, to the admiration of the well-dressed crowds that sauntered under the trees or lingered by the railings. Carriages were passing and repassing. A four-in-hand drove past us, followed by a tandem. Beautiful young faces smiled out of the carriages. A few of them looked weary and careworn. Now and then under the smart bonnet one saw the pinched weazened face of old age,—dowagers in big fur capes looking out with their dim hungry eyes on the follies of Vanity Fair. One wondered at the set senile smile on these old faces; they had fed on husks all their lives, and the food had failed to nourish them; their strength had failed over the battle of life, but they still refused to leave the field of their former triumphs. Everywhere in these fashionable crowds one sees these pale meagre faces that belong to a past age. They wear gorgeous velvets, jewels, feathers, paint: like Jezebel, they would look out of the window curiously to the last. How one longs to take them gently out of the crowd, to wash their poor cheeks, and lead them to some quiet home, where they may shut their tired eyes in peace! 'What is the world to you?' one would say to them. 'You have done all your tasks,—well or badly; leave the arena to the young and the strong; it is no place for you; come home and rest, before the dark angel finds you in your tinsel and gewgaws.' Would they listen to me, I wonder?
Sara's soft dimples came into play presently. A pretty blush rose to her face. A tall man with a bronzed handsome face and iron-gray moustache had detached himself from the other riders, and was cantering towards the carriage that was now drawn up near the entrance: in another moment he had checked his horse with some difficulty.