foothold, and the branches flicked moisture insultingly in their faces as they pushed them aside.

A dead silence reigned everywhere, broken only by the wind as it rustled amongst the bare twigs, or the whistling of a flaring gas-torch protruding from some convenient tree.

Jauncy occasionally shouted back some desperate essay at jocularity, at which Ada laughed with some perseverance, until even she could no longer resist the influence of the surroundings.[Pg 21]

[Pg 21]

On a hot summer's evening those grounds, brilliantly illuminated and crowded by holiday-makers, have been the delight of thousands of honest Londoners, and will be so again; but it was undeniable that on this particular occasion they were pervaded by a decent melancholy.

Ada had slipped a hand, clad in crimson silk, through Leander's arm as they groped through the gloom together, and shrank to his side now and then in an alarm which was only half pretended. But if her light pressure upon his arm made his heart beat at all the faster, it was only at the fancy that the trusting hand was his Matilda's, or so at least did he account for it to himself afterwards.

They followed on, down a broad promenade, where the ground glistened with autumn damps, and the unlighted lamps looked wan and spectral. There was a bear-pit hard by, over the railings of which Ada leaned and shouted a defiant "Boo;" but the bears had turned in for the night, and the stone re-echoed her voice with a hollow ring. Indistinct bird forms were roosting in cages; but her umbrella had no effect upon them.

Jauncy was waiting for them to come up, perhaps as a protection against his fiancée's reproaches. "In another hour," he said, with an implied apology, "you'll see how different this place looks. We—we're come a little too early. Suppose we fill up the time by a nice little dinner at the Restorong—eh, Ada? What do you think, Tweddle?"

The suggestion was received favourably, and Jauncy, thankful to retrieve his reputation as leader, took them towards the spot where food was to be had.

Presently they saw lights twinkling through the trees, and came to a place which was clearly the focus of festivity. There was the open-air theatre, its drop-scene[Pg 22] lowered, its proscenium lost in the gloom; there was the circle for al-fresco dancing, but it was bare, and the clustered lights were dead; there was the restaurant, dark and 

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