ly along to the
station.

A fine show made the paint and silver and the flowers and the gay cloaks
and furs and the beautiful women among them. What is more dashing and
brilliant than a coaching-party? What more inspiring to the eye, more
light and careless; what fun more fast and furious? And many a man that
morning, who felt his hand clothed with all the might of the people,
looked curiously at the equipage of the Yankee millionaire and envied
these gay people, the haughty beauty of the women, the gentlemen with
their calm, unruffled exterior, and the light-heartedness, the
carelessness of it all.

Now, upon this coach were six people; and as they bowled along in the
crisp November morning they were thinking of many things. Let us fancy,
if we can, what some of these gay thoughts were. On the inside seat was
Mr. Sydney, the hired wit, the broken-down man-about-town; his health
gone, his future gone, with no family, no friends, no faith in a
hereafter and no joy in the present; and the day preceding, at dinner,
he had eaten a _vol-au-vent_ which had disagreed with him. Next Mr.
Sydney came the Duchess, the gaunt and dignified lady who awed even
Jawkins to repose. There was not a night of her life that she did not
cry like any schoolgirl whose lover has forgotten her, at the shame of
her life, and the bitterness and humiliation of her daily bread. She
would rail at the old Duke, who had come to it so easily, and was
willing to prostitute the honors of his race for gross creature
comforts, his claret, his cigar; and every morning, when her old eyes
opened, she hated the daylight that told her she was not yet dead.

Next the Duchess came Maggie Windsor. Come now (you might say), she, at
least, is in her place upon a four-in-hand, with her young life, her
happy lot, her pretty, pouting lips and laughing eyes? I do not know; I
marked the quiver of those pretty lips, and the flush of her fresh face,
as her eyes, no longer laughing, looked at Mrs. Carey, just in front.
Beside her sits Sir John Dacre. His lips are closed firmly above the
square blue chin, and his eyes, beneath a prematurely wrinkled brow,
look straight before him out upon the road. Perhaps you would not call
Sir John's face attractive; his expression does not change enough for
charm, and there is not light enough in those still gray eyes. As you
see it now, so his expression has been these twenty years, from his
studious youth at Oxford on. The four horses