So her stout and florid coachman, shaving the kerbstone to an inch, turned under the Marble Arch at a liberal twelve miles an hour, which subsided into three before he reached Grosvenor Gate, and so, losing his identity in a double column of carriages, brilliant and glittering as his own, commenced the performance of that imposing function--grand, deliberate, and funereal--which is solemnised every lawful day in Hyde Park between six and half-past seven p.m. Barouches, sociables, tax-carts, Victorias, every kind of wheeled conveyance, were wedged three-deep in the road. All the chairs on the footway were occupied, and the path was blocked with walkers to the rails. Mounted policemen, making themselves ubiquitous, pranced about and gesticulated with unusual vehemence. Those on foot ferried passengers across the drive at intervals, majestically rebuking for that purpose the horse and his rider, the charioteer, and the foaming, highly-bitted animal he controlled. It was once said of London by a visitor, I believe, from Dublin, that "you could not see the town for the houses." Here, in this high tide of humanity, you could not see the people for the crowd. "Not a soul in the Park!" observed Mrs. Lascelles, languidly scanning the myriads that surrounded her. "I can't think where they get to," said Helen. "Nobody ever seems to come here that one knows." But a vivid blush rose to her temples while she spoke. So becoming was its effect, that a young man, leaning against the rails, extricating his intellect for a moment out of vacancy, exclaimed to his companion: "_Caramba!_ Jack!"--he had once been at Gibraltar for a week, and piqued himself on swearing in Spanish--"_Caramba!_ Jack! what a good-looking girl! Who is she?" And Jack, never at a loss, detailed her private history forthwith, identifying her as the daughter of a foreign minister, and furnishing his friend with a jaw-breaking German name, impracticable to pronounce, even had it been possible to remember. But the origin of this young lady's confusion occupied a position far beyond these pedestrian admirers, and was, indeed, none other than Frank Vanguard, taking the air on a very desirable hack amongst several equestrians of the season, but so partitioned off from Helen by dandies, dowagers, peers, commoners, and servants in livery, to say nothing of an iron railing, that, for all gratification to be obtained from his society, he might as well have been the other side of the Serpentine. He saw her, though, that was some comfort. So did Mrs. Lascelles, confirming thereby into certainty the suspicions she entertained that Helen cherished a real affection for this captivating dragoon. "She's a dear girl," thought that quick-sighted lady; "and Jin shall not interfere with her. He's tolerably well off. They might both do worse; and Sir Henry would like it. Home, John!"