But he was looking back. He had his eye on the woman, who remained in the roadway, pointing after the coach and apparently asking a bystander some question respecting it—perhaps where it stopped. “There she is!” he exclaimed. “The woman with the umbrella! She is pointing after us.” His neighbour looked back but made nothing of it. “I know no one in London,” she said a little primly—but with sweet primness—“except the lady at whose house I stayed last night. And she is not able to leave the house. It must be a mistake.” And with a gentle reserve which had in it nothing of coquetry, she turned her face from him. Tantivy! Tantivy! Tantivy! They were away, bowling down the slope of broad empty Piccadilly with the four nags trotting merrily, and the April sun gilding the roofs of the houses, and falling aslant on the verdure of the Green Park. Then merrily up the rise to Hyde Park Corner, where the new Grecian Gates looked across at the equally new arch on Constitution Hill; and where Apsley House, the residence of “the Duke,” hiding with its new coat of Bath stone the old brick walls, peeped through the trees at the statue of Achilles, erected ten years back in the Duke’s honour. But, alas! what was this? Wherefore the crowd that even at this early hour was large enough to fill the roadway and engage the attention of the New Police? Vaughan looked and saw that every blind in Apsley House was lowered, and that more than half of the windows were shattered. And the little French gentleman who, to the coachman’s disgust, had taken the box-seat, saw it too; nay, had seen it before, for he had come that way to the coach office. He pointed to the silent, frowning mansion, and snapped his fingers. “That is your reward for your Vellington!” he cried, turning in his excitement to the two behind him. “And his lady, I am told, she lie dead behind the broken vindows! They did that last night, your _canaille!_ But he vill not forget! And when the refolution come—bah—he vill have the iron hand! He vill be the Emperor and he vill repay!” No one answered; they treated him with silent British scorn. But they one and all stared back at the scene, at the grim blind house in the early sunshine, and the gaping crowd—as long as it remained in sight. And some, no doubt, pondered the sight. But who, with a pretty face beside him and a long day’s drive before him, a drive by mead and shining river, over hill and down, under the walls of grey churches and by many a marketplace and cheery inn-yard—who would long dwell on changes past or to come? Or fret because in the womb of time might lie that “refolution” of which the little Frenchman spoke? IV TANTIVY! TANTIVY! TANTIVY!