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.

‘I have been looking out for you the last three-quarters of an hour,’ he said, addressing Sara.  ’I could not see the carriage anywhere.—­Miss Garston, we have met before, but I think we hardly know each other,’ looking at me with some degree of interest.  Sara’s cousin was no longer indifferent to him.

I answered him as civilly as I could, but I could see his attention wandered to his young fiancee, and he soon rode round to her side of the carriage.  It was evident, as Lesbia said, that the colonel was honestly in love with Sara.  She looked very young beside him, but there must have been something very winning in her sweet looks and words to the man who had known trouble and had laid a young wife and child to rest in an Indian grave.

Before the evening was over I felt I liked Colonel Ferguson immensely, and thought far more of Sara for being his choice; there was an air of frankness and bonhomie about him that won one’s heart; he was sensible and practical.  In spite of his fondness for Sara, he would keep her in order:  one could see that.  I heard him rebuke her very gently that first evening for some extravagance she was planning.  They were standing apart from the others on the balcony, but I was near the open window, and I heard him say distinctly, in a grave voice,—­