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Hazeldine would urge, with a curious conglomeration of ideas, sacred and profane. But Vera was indifferent to the honour of becoming acquainted with his Royal Highness. Another of Mrs. Hazeldine's troubles was that she absolutely refused to be photographed. "Your portrait might be in every shop window if you chose!" Mrs. Hazeldine would exclaim, despairingly.
"I am sure," began Vera, politely, "if there is anything I can do for you " She breathed more freely now he talked about going away and dying; it would be much better that he should so go away, and so die, than remain interminably on the rampage in Mrs. Hazeldine's drawing-room. Vera had stood siege for close upon an hour.
Hazeldine's drawing-room, in Park Lane, the hour is four o'clock in the afternoon, and the dramatis personæ are Miss Nevill, very red in the face, standing in a corner, behind an oblong velvet table covered with china ornaments, and Monsieur Le Vicomte D'Arblet, also red in the face, gesticulating violently on the further side of it.
"Oh, of course, do as you like, dear." Lucien D'Arblet was annoyed at her defection, but, of course, having accepted Mrs. Hazeldine's invitation, there was nothing for it but to go on with her; so he swallowed his discomfiture as best he could, and proceeded to make himself agreeable to his hostess. As to Vera, she turned away and retraced her steps slowly towards St. Paul's Church.
The "Nevill girl," however, disappointed the expectations of both these charitable ladies by quietly taking her place in Mrs. Hazeldine's brougham, by her friend's side, amid a shower of "Good-nights" from the remainder of the party.
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.
"Ah!" said the nonentity, with a vicious gasp, "you may be sure she has some disreputable supper of men, and cigars, and brandies and sodas waiting for her up in town, or she would never go off so meekly as that in Mrs. Hazeldine's brougham. Still waters run deep, my dear!" "She is a horrid, disreputable girl, I am quite sure of that," is the answer.
Then I went to a lecture at South Kensington, and then by train to Aldersgate Street to see Hazeldine's wife, who is unconscionable enough to live at the top of one of the model lodging houses. Then she told me of another of our people whose child is ill, and they lived in another row of Compton buildings up a hundred more steps, which left my back nearly broken.
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.
What on earth possessed the girl that she would not marry? Had not men dangled at her elbow all the season? Could she not have had such and such elder sons, or such and such wealthy commoner? What was she waiting for? A girl without a penny, who came nobody knew from where, ushered in under Mrs. Hazeldine's wings, with not a decent connection in the world to her name!
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