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But the crowd was too great for any one to remark this; no one saw it save Denis Wilde, whose eyes were sharpened by his love. Once Helen saw that Maurice and Vera were speaking to each other. She could not get near enough to hear what they said, but she saw him bend down and speak to her earnestly, and there was a sad, wistful look in Vera's upturned eyes as she answered him.
"That is Lebedeff's daughter Vera Lukianovna." "Indeed? She looks very sweet. I should like to make her acquaintance." The words were hardly out of her mouth, when Lebedeff dragged Vera forward, in order to present her. "Orphans, poor orphans!" he began in a pathetic voice. "The child she carries is an orphan, too. She is Vera's sister, my daughter Luboff.
Thus had passed a year uneventful and peaceable, with visits from Hubert whenever he had a day or two to spare. They were looked forward to with delight; but if there were a drawback it was in Vera's viewing him partly as one who held her in a sort of chain, and partly as one whom it was pleasant to tease by allowing little casual civilities from Wilfred Merrifield.
He was watching for her now, but without much hope of her coming. She seldom left Vera's bedside in the afternoon for it was then, in the heat of the day, that she usually suffered most. But to-day she had been better. Today for the first time she was able to turn her head and smile and even to murmur a few sentences without distress.
If she went down to the shore with Robin she usually met with a querulous, and sometimes tearful, reception on her return, and though she steadily refused to admit that there was any reason on Vera's part for assuming this attitude, it influenced her none the less.
Before he could add anything she asked, "I suppose you are going to see Stella again this afternoon." "Why er yes," he hesitated. "I think so." "Where? At Vera's?" she asked, adopting a tone not of curiosity but of chiding him for seeing Stella instead of herself. The moment of hesitation, before he said that he didn't know, told her the truth. It was as good as a plain, "Yes."
You see, they took the matter seriously because the house was their hobby; they were always changing its interior, which was more than they could have done for a child, even if they had had one; and Cheswardine's finer and soberer taste was always fighting against Vera's predilection for the novel and the bizarre. Apart from clothes, Vera had not much more than the taste of a mouse.
And obviously he was most happy. Vera had impressed him. There was nothing surprising in that. She was in the fullness of her powers in that direction. It is at this point at the point of the first jumping of Vera's heart that the tale begins to be uncanny and disturbing. Thus runs the explanation.
All at once his pretty, pleasant hostess, with whom he had been glad enough to banter, and with whom even he had been ready to enter upon a mild and innocent flirtation, became horrible and hateful to him; and there came into his mind, like an inspiration, the knowledge of her enmity to Vera; for it was Vera's note that she had opened and read.
Everything in the house went on as before. There were no festivities in honour of Vera's name day, as she had expressed a wish that there should be none. Neither Marfinka nor the Vikentevs came; a messenger was sent to Kolchino with the announcement that Vera Vassilievna was unwell and was keeping her room.
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