about the hour of six P.M
-- Characters , long absent , reappear and give some account of themselves . Five years have passed away since this history opened . It is the month of June once more , -- June , which clothes our London in all its glory , fills its languid ballrooms with living flowers , and its stony causeways with human butterflies . It is about the hour of six P.M. . The lounge in Hyde Park is crowded ; along the road that skirts the Serpentine crawl the carriages one after the other ; congregate by the rails the lazy lookers - on , -- lazy in attitude , but with active eyes , and tongues sharpened on the whetstone of scandal , -- the Scaligers of club windows airing their vocabulary in the Park . Slowly saunter on foot idlers of all degrees in the hierarchy of London idlesse : dandies of established-fame ; youthful tyros in their first season . Yonder in the Ride , forms less inanimate seem condemned to active exercise ; young ladies doing penance in a canter ; old beaux at hard labour in a trot .