friend."

He took the hands--soft slender hands that trembled a very little in his
grasp--within his own, and some nameless charm in their gentle touch
brought a sudden flush into his face, but no appropriate words concerning
his pleasure at meeting her, or his gratification at their future
relations, fell from Maurice Kynaston's lips. He only held her thus by
her hands, and looked at her--looked at her as if he could never look at
her enough--from her head to her feet, and from her feet up again to her
head, till a sudden wave of colour flooded her face at the earnestness
of his scrutiny.

"Vera--_Vera Nevill_!" was all he said; and then below his breath, as
though his absolute amazement were utterly irrepressible: "_By Jove!_"
And Vera laughed softly at the thoroughly British character of the
exclamation.

"How like an Englishman!" she said. "An Italian would have paid me fifty
pretty compliments in half the time you have taken just to stare at me!"

"What a charming _tableau vivant_!" exclaims a voice above them as Mrs.
Romer comes down the staircase. "You really look like a scene in a play!
Pray don't let me disturb you."

"I am making friends with my sister-in-law that is to be, Mrs. Romer,"
says Maurice, who has dropped Vera's hands with a guilty suddenness, and
now endeavours to look completely at his ease--an effort in which he
signally fails.

"Were you? Dear me! I thought you and Miss Nevill were practising the
pose of the 'Huguenots'!"

Now the whole armoury of feminine weapons--impertinence, spite, and bad
manners, born of jealousy--is utterly beneath the contempt of such a
woman as Vera; but she is no untried, inexperienced country girl such as
Mrs. Romer imagines her to be disconcerted or stricken dumb by such an
attack. She knew instantly that she had been attacked, and in what
manner, and she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

"I have never seen that picture, the 'Huguenots,' Mrs. Romer," she
said, quietly; "do you think there is a photograph or a print of it
at Kynaston, Maurice? If so, you or John must show it to me."

And how Mrs. Romer hated her then and there, from that very minute until
her life's end, it would not be easy to set forth!

The utter _insouciance_, the lady-like ignoring of Helen's impertinence,
the quiet assumption of what she knew her own position in the Kynaston
family to be, down to the sisterly "Maurice," whereby she addressed the
man whom in public, at