it to him; any time will do before
the end of the year, any time that you happen to see him, or to be near
enough to visit him; I only want to be sure that it reaches him. All you
have to do is to give it him into his hands when no one else is near.
After all, it is a very small favour I ask you."

"And it is precisely because it is so small, Monsieur D'Arblet," said
Vera, decidedly, "that I cannot imagine why you should make such a point
of a trifle like this; and as I don't like being mixed up in things I
don't understand, I must, I think, decline to have anything to do with
it."

"_Allons donc!_" said the vicomte to himself. "I am reduced to the
china."

He took an excited turn up and down the room, then came back again to
where she stood.

"Miss Nevill!" he cried, with rising anger, "you seem determined to wound
my feelings and to insult my self-respect. You reject my offers, you
sneer at my professions of affection; and now you appear to me to throw
sinister doubts upon the meaning of the small thing I have asked you to
do for me." At each of these accusations he waved his arm up and down to
emphasize his remarks; and now, as if unconsciously, his hand suddenly
fell upon the neck of one of the "Long Eliza" vases on the table before
him. He lifted it up in the air.

"For Heaven's sake, Monsieur D'Arblet, take care--please put down that
vase," cried Vera; suddenly returning to her former terrors.

He looked at the object in his hand as though it were utterly beneath
consideration.

"Vase! what is a vase, I ask? Do you not suppose, before relinquishing
what I ask of you, I would dash a hundred vases such as this into ten
thousand fragments to the earth?" He raised his arm above his head as
though on the point of carrying his threat into execution.

Vera uttered a scream.

"Good gracious! What on earth are you doing? It is Mrs. Hazeldine's
favourite piece of china; she values it more than anything she has got.
If you were to break it, she would go half out of her mind."

"Never mind this wretched vase. Answer me, Mademoiselle Nevill, will you
give that parcel to Captain Kynaston?"

"I am not at all likely to meet him; I assure you nothing is so
improbable. I know him very little. Ah! what are you doing?"

The infuriated Frenchman was whirling the blue-and-white treasure madly
round in the air.

"You are, then, determined to humiliate and to insult me; and to prove to
you how great is my just indignatio