wholly new and delightful manner. The men besieged her
for invitations to her house; the women pressed her to come to theirs. It
was all for Miss Nevill's sake, of course, but, even so, it was very
pleasant, and Mrs. Hazeldine dearly loved the importance of her position.

It came to pass that, whereas she had been somewhat put out at the letter
of her old Roman acquaintance, offering to come and stay with her, and
had been disposed to resent the advent of her self-invited guest as an
infliction, which a few needlessly gushing words in the past had brought
upon herself, she had, in a very short time, discovered that she could
not possibly exist without her darling Vera, and that she would not and
could not let her go back again to her country vicarage.

It was, possibly, what Vera had counted upon. It was pretty certain to
have been either one thing or the other. Either her beauty would arouse
Mrs. Hazeldine's jealousy, and she would be glad to be rid of her as
quickly as possible, or else she would be proud of her, and wish to
retain her as an attraction to her house. Fortunately for Vera, Cissy
Hazeldine, worldly, frivolous, pleasure-loving as she was, was,
nevertheless, utterly devoid of the mean and petty spitefulness which
goes far to disfigure many a better woman's character. She was not
jealous of Vera; on the contrary, she was as unfeignedly proud of her as
though she had created her. Besides, as she said to herself, "Our style
is so different, we are not likely to clash."

When she found that in a month's time Vera's beauty had made her house
the most popular one in London, and that people struggled for her
invitation-cards and prayed to be introduced to her, Mrs. Hazeldine was
at the zenith of her delight and self-importance. If only Vera herself
had been a little more practicable!

"I don't despair of getting you introduced to royalty before the season
is out," she would say, triumphantly.

"I don't want to be introduced to royalty," Vera would answer
indifferently.

"Oh! Vera, how can you be so disloyal? And it's quite wicked too; almost
against Scripture. Honour the King, you know it says somewhere; of course
that means the Prince of Wales too."

"I can honour him very well without being introduced to him," said Vera,
who, however, let me assure you, was filled with feelings of profound
loyalty towards the reigning family.

"But only think what a triumph it would be over those other horrid women
wh