It was early May, and the young leaves were green in the avenues of Kensington Gardens; Bayswater was bright and gay with fashionable people; and Mrs. Sheldon found herself strong enough to enjoy her afternoon drive in Hyde Park, where the contemplation of the bonnets afforded her perennial delight. "I think they are actually smaller than ever this year," she remarked every season; and every season the headgear of fashionable London did indeed seem to shrink and dwindle, "fine by degrees, and beautifully less." The coalscuttle-shaped headdress of our grandmothers had not yet resolved itself into a string of beads and a rosebud in these days, but was obviously tending thitherward. Charlotte and Diana accompanied Mrs. Sheldon in her drives. The rapture of contemplating the bonnets was not complete unless the lady had some sympathising spirit to share her delight. The two girls were very well pleased to mingle in that brilliant crowd, and to go back to their own quiet life when the mystic hour came, and that bright vision of colour and beauty melted into the twilight loneliness. It had seemed just lately, however, as if Charlotte was growing a little weary of the gorgeous spectacle--the ever-changing, ever-splendid diorama of West End life. She no longer exclaimed at the sight of each exceptional toilette; she no longer smiled admiringly on the thoroughbred horses champing their bits in the immediate neighbourhood of her bonnet; she no longer gave a little cry of delight when the big drags came slowly along the crowded ranks, the steel bars shining as they swung loosely in the low afternoon sunlight, the driver, conscious of his glory, grave and tranquil, with the pride that apes humility. "See, Lotta," said Miss Paget, upon an especially bright May evening, as one of these gorgeous equipages went past Mr. Sheldon's landau, "there's another drag. Did you see it?" "Yes, dear, I saw it." "And are you tired of four-in-hands? You used to admire them so much." "I admire them as much as ever, dear." "And yet you scarcely gave those four splendid roans a glance." "No," Charlotte answered, with a faint sigh. "Are you tired, Lotta?" Miss Paget asked, rather anxiously. There was something in Charlotte's manner of late that had inspired her with a vague sense of anxiety; some change which she could scarcely define--a change so gradual that it was only by comparing the Charlotte of some months ago with the Charlotte of the present that she perceived how real a change it was. The buoyancy and freshness, the girlish vivacity of Miss Halliday's manner, were rapidly giving place to habitual listlessness. "Are you tired, dear?" she repeated, anxiously; and Mrs. Sheldon looked round from her contemplation of the bonnets. "No, Di, dearest, not tired; but--I don't feel very well this afternoon."