The weather looked threatening as we drove off, precisely at twelve o'clock, and presently it began to rain with great industry and determination. The drops came streaming down outside the carriage windows; fewer people as we passed leaned out of hansoms to look at us. Inside the Mafferton carriage we were absurdly secure from the weather; we surveyed our trains, piled up on the opposite seat, with complacency; we took no thought even for the curl of our feathers. We counted, as we drove past them to take our place, and there were forty carriages in line ahead of us. Then we stopped behind the last, in the middle of a wide road, heavily bordered under the trees with damp people and dripping umbrellas--there for the spectacle. All kinds of people and all kinds of umbrellas, I noticed with interest--ladies and gentlemen, and little seamstresses, and loafers and ragamuffins, and apple-women, and a large proportion of your respectable lower middle-class. We sat in state amongst them in the rain, being observed, and liking it. I heard my roses approved, and the nape of my neck, and Lady Torquilin's diamonds. I also heard it made very unpleasant for an elderly young lady in the carriage in front of ours, whose appearance was not approved by a pair of candid newsboys. The policemen kept the people off, however; they could only approach outside a certain limit, and there they stood, or walked up and down, huddled together in the rain, and complaining of the clouded carriage windows. I think there came to me then, sitting in the carriage in the warmth and pride and fragrance and luxuriance of it all, one supreme moment of experience, when I bent my head over my roses and looked out into the rain--one throb of exulting pleasure that seemed to hold the whole meaning of the thing I was doing, and to make its covetable nature plain. I find my thoughts centre, looking back, upon that one moment. It was three o'clock before we moved again. In the hours that came between we had nothing to do but smell our flowers, discuss the people who drove past to take places farther down the line, congratulate ourselves upon being forty-first, and eat tiny sandwiches done up in tissue paper, with serious regard for the crumbs; yet the time did not seem at all long. Mr. Oddie Pratte, who was to escort us through the palace and home again, made an incident, dashing up in a hansom on his way to the club to dress, but that was all. And once Lady Torquilin had the footman down to tell him and his brother-functionary under the big umbrella to put on their rubber coats. 'Thank you, my lady!' said the footman, and went back to the box; but neither of them took advantage of the permission. They were going to Court too, and knew what was seemly. And the steamy crowd stayed on till the last. XXIX