You might have thought this if you were prone to sentimental musings in the tender twilight; but if you were a sober, practical person, you would most likely have found out who the lady was, and all about her. She was Lady Cecil Chudleigh, orphan daughter of Lord Aspendell; and she was the unpaid companion, the unrecompensed dependant upon the elderly dowager to whom the phantom chariot belonged, and who sat far back in the vehicle, while her beautiful niece looked sadly out upon the rosy bosom of the Serpentine. In all the world Lady Cecil had no other friend or protector than the dowager, who was the widow of an Anglo-Indian general, and only surviving sister of the dead Countess of Aspendell. The Anglo-Indian warrior had distinguished himself at more places ending with "pore" and "bad" than can be numerated without weariness, had lived a life of reckless and barbaric extravagance in despite of all feminine remonstrance, and had died, leaving his widow very little except his pension and a house-full of Indian shawls, embroidered muslins, sandal-wood boxes, beetle-baskets, and Trichinopoly jewelry. After the General's death, Mrs. MacClaverhouse--the warrior was of Scottish extraction, and claimed kindred with the hero of Killiecrankie,--after her husband's death the widow had sold the lease of the great house in Portland Place, in whose pillared dining-room the General had been wont to entertain all the notabilities of the three presidencies, and beneath whose sheltering roof he had staggered half tipsy to bed every night for the last ten years of his life. She sold the lease, and the furniture, and the very curious old ports, and constantias, and madeiras; but she kept all the bangles and sandal-wood, the beetles' wings and gorgeous scarfs, and shawls and table-covers, and a very nice little selection from the rare old wines, and a small stock of the plate, and glass, and china, and table-linen, which the magnificent General had chosen, of such splendid quality; and with these she retired to furnished apartments on the quietest side of Dorset Square. She kept the chariot in which she had driven and visited for the last twenty years of her life, and the fat grey horses that had drawn it; but she sent the equipage to a livery-stable in the neighbourhood of her new abode, and she bargained with the proprietor for a sober coachman at five-and-twenty shillings a week; a coachman who wore the stable-yard livery, and was sometimes almost disreputable about the legs and feet.