s and hansoms."

"Yet my own scene swims before my eyes--I have lived with it so long."

"You have still to live with it," she reminded him.

"If I do not die of it," he answered pleasantly. "Seriously, I came near
to doing so."

"This omnibus is marked 'Aldgate,'" she flew off. "Now that makes me
think of Aldgate Pump. I wonder if it goes near the Pump?"

Wyndham jumped on the foot-board, and put the question to the conductor.

"We pass within a yard of it," was the reply.

"Good," said Wyndham. The omnibus drew up, and Lady Betty mounted the
stairway, and they seated themselves on the roof.

"Look!" he exclaimed. "The clouds are suddenly breaking; it will be all
blue and sunshine soon."

"A grey ghostly blue, a cold, charming sunshine."

"Yet the promise is splendid after all this winter."

"The promise is splendid," she echoed; "and we are so happy to-day."

"We are so happy," he repeated.

He let himself lapse into a dreamy mood; he was enchanted to have her so
near him, to feel the afternoon and evening stretching endlessly before
them--a veritable lifetime of golden moments. Lady Betty's manner
offered a marked contrast. Hers was a frank exhilaration, an excited
gaiety, of which he had the full impression; though she kept it in a low
key, like love's whisper intended for his ear alone. Soon, as he had
predicted, the sky grew bluer, the sunshine warmer; the traffic and the
bustle of the streets were cheerfully pleasant to the eye and the ear in
the fresh day.

"Even the London we know seems delightful," he remarked.

"London, though sometimes impelling to revolt, is always wonderful--it
has always the fascination of the unknown."

"And is as supremely problematic as the unknowable of the philosophers."

"But it is solid and real, comes to us through all the five senses. Look
at that strange old man with the tiger-lilies. I wonder how he comes by
them at this time of year."

"That is one of the wonders of London," said Wyndham. "One sees the
flowers of all seasons at every season."

"And sometimes the weather of all seasons at every season. Has Aldgate
Pump a history?"

He confessed to ignorance, though he had an idea that he had read much
about it in his boyhood, an epoch when he had been fascinated by all the
odd monuments of the town. He recalled, however, after a time, that
there was a legend connected with it, not unlike that of the wandering
Jew.

"Is it actually a pump?" she asked.