growth, her days were of the quietest. Not till she was two-and-twenty
did she fully recover from the effects of her sudden sorrow and the
subsequent overwork. In the meantime, her father's influence steadily
deepened and spread throughout the country, and troubles multiplied.

CHAPTER XVI. Hyde Park

Who spouts his message to the wilderness,
Lightens his soul and feels one burden less;
But to the people preach, and you will find
They'll pay you back with thanks ill to your mind.
Goethe. Translated by J.S.B.

Hyde Park is a truly national property, and it is amusing and perhaps
edifying to note the various uses to which it is often put. In the
morning it is the rendezvous of nurses and children; in the afternoon
of a fashionable throng; on Sunday evenings it is the resort of
hard-working men and women, who have to content themselves with getting
a breath of fresh air once a week. But, above all, the park is the
meeting place of the people, the place for mass meetings and monster
demonstrations.

On a bright day in June, when the trees were still in their freshest
green, the crowd of wealth and fashion had beaten an ignominious retreat
before a great political demonstration to be held that afternoon.

Every one knew that the meeting would be a very stormy one, for it
related to the most burning question of the day, a question which was
hourly growing more and more momentous, and which for the time had
divided England into two bitterly opposed factions.

These years which Erica had passed so quietly had been eventful years
for the country, years of strife and bloodshed, years of reckless
expenditure, years which deluded some and enraged others, provoking most
bitter animosity between the opposing parties. The question was not a
class question, and a certain number of the working classes and a large
number of the London roughs warmly espoused the cause of that party
which appealed to their love of power and to a selfish patriotism. The
Hyde Park meeting would inevitably be a turbulent one. Those who wished
to run no risk remained at home; Rotten Row was deserted; the carriage
road almost empty; while from the gateways there poured in a never
ending stream of people some serious-looking, some eager and excited,
some with a dangerously vindictive look, some merely curious. Every now
and then the more motley and disorderly crowd was reinforced by a club
with its brass band and banners, and