“How cool it is under these delicious trees,” said the lady of the pink bonnet. “Yes, indeed, if the young lady will have me, it will be a treat to be behind those beautiful ponies. Pretty creatures! like their mistress. I have not seen anything so pretty, Lenny, since we left the regiment. Ah, that was a foolish step. But one never knows when one is well off. ‘_Lay mew_,’ as the French say, is the enemy of ‘_lay bieng_.’ Thank you, my dear. Now this _is_ delightful! I wish, instead of being within sight, we were three or four miles from the house.” “Take Mrs. Lenny round by the fishpond,” said Lady Markham. She sighed with relief at getting rid of this new claimant upon her attention, though she was so polite. Mrs. Lenny was tall like her husband, and like him, brown and soldierly. She made the light little carriage bend on one side as she got in. Her brown face within the pink shade of the bonnet was wreathed with smiles. She was delighted like a child with the pretty equipage, and the promised drive--much more delighted than Alice was, who, though relieved of her terrors about Paul, drove off in no very happy state of mind. Yet she could not help taking a little pleasure in her own discrimination. “I knew you were coming here the first moment I saw you,” she said. “I kept asking papa who you were. But he had not seen you--he did not know you; he never knows any one--not even, if he were to see us at a distance, mamma or me.” “Nor I,” said Mrs. Lenny. “I should no more have known him! for you may be sure I took a good stare at the station, seeing it was somebody of consequence. He is so changed--oh, not for the worse, my dear; but when you see a nice little old gentleman instead of a pretty young one, it’s a shock, that can’t be denied. You have to count up and think back how many years it is. Somehow one never feels old one’s self. You think the world has stood still with you, though it goes so fast with all the rest.” “I don’t feel at all like that,” said Alice. “Sometimes I feel so old--older a great deal, I am sure, than mamma.” This statement was received by her companion with laughter, which disconcerted Alice. She drew herself up. She was not so polite as her mother. “I don’t see what there is to laugh at,” she said. “Age does not go only by years--when you have a great deal to think of----”