BOOK THE SEVENTH.
A CLOUD OF FEAR.
CHAPTER I.
THE BEGINNING OF SORROW.
Who heeds the cloud no bigger than a man's hand amidst a broad expanse of
blue ether? The faint, scarce perceptible menace of that one little cloud
is lost in the wide brightness of a summer sky. The traveller jogs on
contented and unthinking, till the hoarse roar of stormy winds, or the
first big drops of the thunder-shower, startle him with a sudden
consciousness of the coming storm.
It was early May, and the young leaves were green in the avenues of
Kensington Gardens; Bayswater was bright and gay with fashionable people;
and Mrs. Sheldon found herself strong enough to enjoy her afternoon drive
in Hyde Park, where the contemplation of the bonnets afforded her
perennial delight.
"I think they are actually smaller than ever this year," she remarked
every season; and every season the headgear of fashionable London did
indeed seem to shrink and dwindle, "fine by degrees, and beautifully
less." The coalscuttle-shaped headdress of our grandmothers had not yet
resolved itself into a string of beads and a rosebud in these days, but
was obviously tending thitherward.
Charlotte and Diana accompanied Mrs. Sheldon in her drives. The rapture
of contemplating the bonnets was not complete unless the lady had some
sympathising spirit to share her delight. The two girls were very well
pleased to mingle in that brilliant crowd, and to go back to their own
quiet life when the mystic hour came, and that bright vision of colour
and beauty melted into the twilight loneliness.
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