Vera Nevill

ST. PAUL'S, KNIGHTSBRIDGE.

Upon the steps of the Charing Cross Hotel stood, one morning in June, a little French gentleman buttoning his lavender gloves. He wore a glossy new hat, a frock-coat, and a flower in his button-hole; he had altogether a smart and jaunty appearance.

He hailed a passing hansom and jumped into it, taking care as he did so to avoid brushing against the muddy wheel, lest he should tarnish the glories of his light-coloured trousers. Monsieur D'Arblet was more than usually particular about his appearance this morning. He said to himself, with a chuckle, as he was driven west-ward, that he was on his way to win a bride, and a rich bride, too. It behoved him to be careful of his outer man on such an occasion.

He had heard of Mr. Harlowe's death and of his grand-daughter's good fortune when he was at Constantinople, for he had friends in London who kept him au courant with the gossip of society, and he had straightway made his preparations to return to England. He had not hurried himself, however, for what he had not heard of was that clause in the old man's will which made his grand-daughter's marriage within two months the sine quâ non of her inheriting his fortune. Such an idea as that had never come into Monsieur D'Arblet's head; he had no conception but that he should be in plenty of time.

When he got to the house in Princes Gate he found it shut up. This, however, did not disconcert him, it was no more than he expected. After a considerable amount of ringing at both bells, there was a grating sound within as of the unfastening of bolts and chains, and an elderly woman, evidently fresh from her labours over the scouring of the kitchen grate, appeared at the door, opening it just a couple of inches, as though she dreaded the invasion of a gang of housebreakers.

"Will you please tell me where Mrs. Romer is now living?"

The woman grinned. "She has been living at Walpole Lodge, at Kew—Lady Kynaston's, sir."

"Oh, thank you;" and he was preparing to re-enter his hansom.

"But I don't think you will see her to-day, sir."

"Why not?" turning half-round again.

"It is Mrs. Romer's wedding-day."

"What?"

That elderly female, who had been at one time a housemaid in Mr. Harlowe's household, confided afterwards to her intimate friend, the kitchenmaid next door, that she was so frightened at the way that foreign-looking gentleman shouted at her, that she felt as if she should have dropped. "Indeed, my dear, I was forced to go down and get a drop of whisky the very instant he was gone, I felt so fluttered, like."

Monsieur Le Vicomte turned round to her, with his foot midway between the pavement and the step of the hansom, and shouted at her again.

"What did you say it was, woman?"

"Why, Mrs. Romer's wedding-day, to be sure, sir; and no such wonder after all, I should say; and a lovely morning for the wedding it be, too."

Lucien D'Arblet put his hand vaguely up to his head, as though he had received a blow; she had escaped him, then, after all.

"So soon after the old man's death," he murmured, half aloud; "who could have expected it?"

"Well, sir, and soon it is, as you say," replied the ancient ex-housemaid, who had caught the remark; "but people do say as how Mr. Harlowe, my late master, wished it so, and of course Mrs. Romer, she were quite ready, so to speak, for the Captain had been a-courting her for ever so long, as we who lived in the house could have told."

The vicomte was fumbling at his breast-coat pocket, his face was as yellow as the rose in his button-hole.

"Where was the wedding to be? At Kew?"

"No, sir; at Saint Paul's church, in Wilton Crescent. Mrs. Romer would have it so, because that's the place of worship she used to go to when she lived here. You'd be in time to see them married now, sir, if you was to look sharp; it was to be at half-past eleven, and it's not that yet; my niece and a young friend has just started a-foot to go there. I let her go, because she'd never seen a grand wedding. I'd like to have gone myself, but, in course, we couldn't both be out of the house——"

The gentleman was listening no longer; he had sprung into his hansom.

"Drive to Saint Paul's, Knightsbridge, as fast as your horse can go," he called out to the cabman. "I might even now be in time; it would be a coup d'état," he muttered.

Round the door of Saint Paul's church a crowd had gathered, waiting to see the bridal party come out; there was a strip of red cloth across the pavement, and a great many carriages were standing down the street; big footmen were lounging about, chatting amicably together; a knot of decently-dressed women were pressing up as close to the porch as the official personage, with a red collar on his coat and gold lace on his hat, would allow them to go; and an indiscriminate collection of those chance passers-by who never seem to be in any hurry, or to have anything better to do than to stand and stare at any excitement, great or small, that they may meet on their road, were blocking up the pavement on either side of the red cloth carpeting.

Two ladies came walking along from the direction of the Park.

"There's a wedding going on; do let us go in and see it, Vera."

"My dear Cissy, I detest looking at people being married; it always makes me low-spirited."

"And I love it. I always get such hints for dresses from a wedding. I'd go anywhere to see anybody married. I've been to the Jewish synagogue, to Spurgeon's tabernacle, and to the pro-cathedral, all in one week, before now just to see weddings."

"There must be a sameness about the performances. Don't you get sick of them?"

"Never. I wonder whose wedding it is; there must be thirty carriages waiting. I'll ask one of these big footmen. Whose wedding is it?"

"Captain Kynaston's, ma'am."

"Oh, I used to know him once; he is such a handsome fellow. Come along, Vera."

"Cissy, I cannot come."

"Nonsense, Vera; don't be so foolish; make haste, or we shan't get in."

Somebody just then dashed up in a hansom, and came hurrying up behind them. Somehow or other, what with Mrs. Hazeldine dragging her by the arm, and an excited-looking gentleman pushing his way through the crowd behind her, Vera got swept on into the church.

"You are very late, ladies," whispered the pew-opener, who supposed them to belong to the wedding guests; "it is nearly over. You had better take these seats in this pew; you will see them come out well from here." And she evidently considered them to be all one party, for she ushered them all three into a pew; first, Mrs. Hazeldine, then Vera, and next to her the little foreign-looking gentleman who had bustled up so hurriedly.

It was an awful thing to have happened to Vera that she should have been thus entrapped by a mere accident into being present at Maurice's wedding; and yet, when she was once inside the church, she felt not altogether sorry for it.

"I can at least see the last of him, and pray that he may be happy," she said to herself, as she sank on her knees in the shelter of the pew, and buried her face in her hands.

The church was crowded, and yet the wedding itself was not a particularly attractive one, for, owing to the fact that the bride was a widow, there was, of course, no bevy of bridesmaids in attendance in diaphanous raiment. Instead of these, however, there was a great concourse of the best-dressed women in London, all standing in rows round the upper end of the nave; and there was a little old lady, in brown satin and point lace, who stood out conspicuously detached from the other groups, who bent her head solemnly over the great bouquet of exotics in her hands, and prayed within herself, with a passionate fervour such as no other soul present could pray, save only the pale, beautiful girl on her knees, far away down at the further end of the church. Surely, if God ever gave happiness to one of his creatures because another prayed for it, Maurice Kynaston, with the prayers of those two women being offered up for him, would have been a happy man.

And the mother, by this time, knew that it was all a mistake—a mistake, alas, which she, in her blindness, had fostered.

No wonder that she trembled as she prayed.

The service, that portion of it which makes two people man and wife, was over; the clergyman was reading the final exhortation to the newly-married pair.

They stood together close to the altar rails. The bride was in a pale lavender satin, covered with lace, which spread far away behind her across the tesselated pavement. The bridegroom stood by her side, erect and handsome, but pale and stern, and with a far-away look in his eyes that would have made any one fancy, had any one been near enough or attentive enough to remark it, that he was only an indifferent spectator of the scene, in no way interested in what was going on. He looked as if he were thinking of something else.

He was thinking of something else. He was thinking of a railway carriage, of a train rushing onwards through a fog-blotted landscape, and of two arms, warm and soft, cast up round his neck, and a trembling, passionate voice, ever crying in his ears—

"While you live I will never marry another man."

That was what the bridegroom was thinking about.

As to the bride, she was debating to herself whether she should have the body of her wedding-dress cut V or square when she left it with her dressmaker to be altered into a dinner-dress.

Meanwhile the clergyman, who mumbled his words slightly, and whose glasses kept on tumbling off his nose, waded through the several duties of husbands towards their wives, and of wives towards their husbands, as expounded by Scripture, in a monotonous undertone, until, to the great relief of the weary guests, the ceremony at last came to an end.

Then the best man, Sir John, who stood behind his brother, looking, if possible, more like a mute at a funeral even than the bridegroom himself, stepped forward out of the shadow. The new-married couple went into the vestry, followed by Sir John, his mother, and a select few, upon which the door was closed. All the rest of the company then began to chatter in audible whispers together; they fidgeted backwards and forwards, from one pew to the other. There were jokes, and smiles, and nods, and hand-shakings between the different members of the wedding party. All in a low and decorous undertone, of course, but still there was a distinct impression upon every one that all the religious part of the business being well got over, they were free to be jolly about it now, and to enjoy themselves as much as circumstances would admit of.

All at once there was a sudden hush, everybody scuffled back into their places. The best man put his nose out of the vestry door, and the "Wedding March" struck up. Then came a procession of chorister boys down the church, each bearing a small bouquet of fern and white flowers. They ranged themselves on either side of the porch, and the bride and bridegroom came down the aisle alone.

Then it was that Monsieur D'Arblet, leaning forward with the rest to see them pass, caught sight of the face of the girl who stood by his side.

She was pale as death; a look as of the horror of despair was in her eyes, her teeth were set, her hands were clenched together as one who has to impose a terrible and dreadful task upon herself. Nobody in all that gaily-dressed chattering crowd noticed her, for were not all eyes fixed upon the bride, the queen of the day? Nobody save the man who stood by her side. Only he saw that fixed white look of despair, only he heard the long shuddering sigh that burst from her pale lips as the bridegroom went by. Monsieur D'Arblet said, to himself:

"This woman loves Monsieur le Capitaine! Bon! Two are better than one; we will avenge ourselves together, my beautiful incognita."

And then he looked sharply at her companion, and found that her face was familiar to him. Surely he had dined at that woman's house once. Oh, yes! to be sure, it was that insufferable little chatterbox, Mrs. Hazeldine. He remembered all about her now.

There was a good deal of pushing and cramming at the doorway. By the time Vera could get out of the stifling heat of the crowded church most of the wedding party had driven off, and the rest were clamouring wildly for their carriages; she herself had got separated from her companion, and when she could rejoin her in the little gravelled yard outside, she found her shaking hands with effusion with the foreign-looking gentleman who had sat next her in the church, but whom, truth to say, she had hardly noticed.

"Let me present to you my friend," said Cissy. "Miss Nevill, Monsieur D'Arblet—you will walk with us as far as the park, won't you?"

"I shall be enchanted, Mrs. Hazeldine."

"And wasn't it a pretty wedding," continued Mrs. Hazeldine, rapturously, as they all three walked away together down the shady side of the street; "so remarkably pretty considering that there were no bridesmaids; but Mrs. Romer is so graceful, and dresses so well. I don't visit her myself, you know; but of course I know her by sight. One knows everybody by sight in London; it's rather embarrassing sometimes, because one is tempted to bow to people one doesn't visit, or else one fancies one ought not to bow to somebody one does. I've made some dreadfully stupid mistakes myself sometimes. Did you notice the rose point on that old lady's brown satin, Vera?"

"That was Lady Kynaston."

"Oh, was it? By the way, of course, you must know some of the Kynastons, as they come from your part of the world. I wonder they didn't ask you to the wedding."

Vera murmured something unintelligible. Monsieur D'Arblet looked at her sharply. He saw that she had in no way recovered her agitation yet, and that she could hardly bear her companion's brainless chatter over this wedding.

"That has been no ordinary love affair," said this astute Frenchman to himself. "I must decidedly cultivate this young lady's acquaintance, for I mean to pay you out well yet, ma belle Hélène."

"How fortunate it was we happened to be passing just as it was going on. I wouldn't have missed seeing that lovely lavender satin the bride wore for worlds; did you notice the cut of the jacket front, Vera; it was something new; she looked as happy as possible too. I daresay her first marriage was a coup manqué; they generally are when women marry again."

"Suppose we take these three chairs in the shade," suggested Monsieur D'Arblet, cutting short, unceremoniously the string of her remarks, which apparently were no more soothing to himself than to Miss Nevill.

They sat down, and for the space of half an hour Monsieur D'Arblet proceeded to make himself politely agreeable to Miss Nevill, and he succeeded so well in amusing her by his conversation, that by the time they all got up to go the natural bloom had returned to her cheeks, and she was talking to him quite easily and pleasantly, as though no catastrophe in her life had happened but an hour ago.

"You will come back with us to lunch, Monsieur D'Arblet?"

"I shall be delighted, madame."

"If you will excuse me, Cissy, I am not going to lunch with you to-day," said Vera.

"My dear! where are you going, then?"

"I have a visit to pay—an engagement, I mean—in—in Cadogan Place. I will be home very soon, in time for your drive, if you don't mind my leaving you."

"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. It was a foolish romantic fancy, she could not tell what impelled her to it, but she felt as though she must go back there once more.

The church was not closed. She pushed open the swing-door and went in. It was all hushed and silent and empty. Where so lately the gay throng of well-dressed men and women had passed in and out, chattering, smiling, nodding—displaying their radiant toilettes one against the other, there were only now the dark, empty rows of pews, and the bent figure of one shabbily-dressed old woman gathering together the prayer-books and hymn-books that had been tumbled out of their places in the scuffle, and picking up morsels of torn finery that had dropped about along the nave.

Vera passed by her and went up into the chancel. She stood where Maurice had stood by the altar rails. A soft, subdued light came streaming in through the coloured glass window; a bird was chirping high up somewhere among the oak rafters of the roof, the roar of the street without was muffled and deadened; the old woman slammed-to the door of a pew, the echo rang with a hollow sound through the empty building, and her departing footsteps shuffled away down the aisle into silence.

Vera lifted her eyes; great tears welled down slowly, one by one, over her cheeks—burning, blistering tears, such as, thank God, one sheds but once or twice in a lifetime—that seem to rend our very hearts as they rise.

Presently she sank down upon her knees and prayed—prayed for him, that he might be happy and forget her, but most of all for herself, that she might school her rebellious heart to patience, and her wild passion of misery into peace and submission.

And by degrees the tempest within her was hushed. Then, ere she rose from her knees, something lying on the ground, within a yard of where she knelt, caught her eye. It was a little Russia-leather letter-case. She recognized it instantly; she had often seen Maurice take it out of his pocket.

She caught at it hungrily and eagerly, as a miser clutches a treasure-trove, pressing it wildly to her bosom, and covering it with passionate kisses. Dear little shabby case, that had been so near his heart; that his hand, perchance, only on hour ago had touched. Could anything on earth be more priceless to her than this worn and faded object!

It seemed to be quite empty. It had fallen evidently from his pocket during the service. If he ever missed it, there was nothing in it to lose; and now it was hers, hers by every right; she would never part with it, never. It was all she had of him; the one single thing he had touched which she possessed.

She rose hurriedly. She was in haste now to be gone with her treasure, lest any one should wrest it from her. She carried it down the church with a guilty delight, kissing it more than once as she went. And then, as she opened the church door, some one ran up the steps outside, and she stood face to face with Sir John Kynaston.

THE RUSSIA-LEATHER CASE.

"Vera!"

Sir John Kynaston fell back a step or two and turned very white.

"How do you do?" said Vera, quietly, and put out her hand.

They stood in the open air. There was a carriage passing, some idle cabmen on the stand with nothing to do but to stare at them, a gaping nursery-maid and her charges at the gate. Whatever people may feel on suddenly running against each other after a deadly quarrel, or a heart-rending separation, or after a long interval of heart-burnings and misunderstandings, there are always the externals of life to be observed. It is difficult to rush into the tragedy of one's existence at a gulp; it is safer to shake hands and say, "How do you do?"

That is what Vera felt, and that was what these two people did. Sir John took her proffered hand, and responded to her stereotyped greeting. By the time he had done so he had recovered his presence of mind.

"What an odd thing to meet you at the door of this church," he said, rather nervously. "Do you know that my brother was married here this morning?"

"Yes; I was in the church."

"Were you? How glad I am I did not know it," almost involuntarily.

There was a little pause; then Vera asked him if he was going to Walpole Lodge.

"Eventually; but I have come back here to look for something. My brother has lost a little Russia-leather case; he thinks he may have dropped it in the church; there were two ten-pound notes in it. I am going in to look for it. Why, what is that in your hand? I believe that is the very thing."

"I—I—just picked it up," stammered Vera. She began searching in the pockets of the case. "I did not think there was anything in it. Yes, here are the notes, quite safe."

She took them out and gave them to him. He held out his hand mechanically for the case also.

"Thank you; you have saved me the trouble of looking for it. I will take it back to him at once."

But she could not part with her treasure; it was all she had got of him.

"The letter-case is very shabby," she said, crimsoning with a painful confusion. "I do not think he can want it at all; it is quite worn out."

Sir John looked at her with a slight surprise.

"It can be very little use to him. One likes sometimes to have a little remembrance of those—of people—one has known; he would not mind my keeping it, I think. Tell him—tell him I asked for it." The tears were very near her voice; she could scarcely keep them back out of her eyes.

John Kynaston dropped his hand, and Vera slipped the little case quickly into her pocket.

"Would you mind walking a little way with me, Vera?" he said, gently and very gravely.

She drew down her veil, and went with him in silence. They had walked half-way down Wilton Crescent before he spoke to her again; then he turned towards her, and looked at her earnestly and sadly.

"Why did you go back again into the church, Vera?"

"I wanted to think quietly a little," she murmured. There was another pause.

"So that is what parted us!" he exclaimed, with a sudden bitterness, at length.

She looked up, startled and pale.

"What do you mean?" she stammered.

"Oh, child! I see it all now. How blind I have been. Ah, why did you not trust me, love? Why did you fear to tell me your secret? Do you not think that I, who would have laid down my life for you to make you happy, do you not suppose I would have striven to make your path smooth for you?"

She could not answer him; the kind words, the tender voice, were too much for her. Her tears fell fast and silently.

"Tell me," he said, turning to her almost roughly, "tell me the truth. Has he ill-treated you, this brother of mine, who stole you from me, and then has left you desolate?"

"No, no; do not say that; it was never his fault at all, only mine; and he was always bound to her. He has been everything that is good and loyal and true to you and to her; it has been only a miserable mistake, and now it is over. Yes, thank God, it is over; never speak of it again. He was never false to you; only I was false. But it is ended."

They were walking round Belgrave Square by this time, not near the houses, but round the square garden in the middle. All recollection of his brother's marriage, of the wedding breakfast at Walpole Lodge, of the speech the best man would be expected to make, had gone clean out of his head; he thought of nothing but Vera and of the revelation concerning her that had just come to him. It was the quiet hour of the day; there were very few people about; everybody was indoors eating heavy luncheons, with sunblinds drawn down to keep out the heat. They were almost as much alone as in a country lane in Meadowshire.

"What are you going to do with yourself?" he said to her, presently. "What use are you going to make of your life?"

"I don't know," she answered, drearily; "I suppose I shall go back to Sutton. Perhaps I shall marry."

"But not me?"

She looked up at him piteously.

"Listen, child," he said, eagerly. "If I were to go away for a year, and then come back to you, how would it be? Oh, my darling! I love you so deeply that I could even be content to do with but half your heart, so that I could win your sweet self. I would exact nothing from you, love, no more than what you could give me freely. But I would love you so well, and make your life so sweet and pleasant to you, that in time, perhaps, you would forget the old sorrow, and learn to be happy, with a quiet kind of happiness, with me; I would ask for no more. Look, child, I have grieved sorely for you; I have sat down and wept, and mourned for you as though I had no strength or life left in me. But now I am ashamed of my weakness, for it is unworthy of you. I am going away abroad, across the world, I care not where, so long as I can be up and doing, and forget the pain at my heart. Vera, tell me that I may come back to you in a year. Think with what fresh life and courage I should go if I had but that hope before my eyes. In a year's time your pain will be less; you will have forgotten many things; you will be content, perhaps, to come to me, knowing that I will never reproach you with the past, nor expect more than you can give me in the future. Vera, let me come back and claim you in a year!"

How strange it was that the chance of marrying this man was perpetually being presented to her. Never, perhaps, had the temptation been stronger to her than it was now. He had divined her secret; there would be no concealment between them; he would ask her for no love it was not in her power to give; he would be content with her as she was, and he would love her, and worship her, and surround her with everything that could make her life pleasant and easy for her. Could a man offer more? Oh! why could she not take him at his word, and give him the hope he craved for?

Alas! for Vera; she had eaten too deeply of the knowledge of good and evil—that worldly wisdom in whose strength she had started in life's race, and in the possession of which she had once deemed herself so strong—so absolutely invulnerable to the things that pierce and wound weaker woman—this was gone from her. The baser part of her nature, wherewith she would so gladly have been content, was uppermost no longer; her heart had triumphed over her head, and, with a woman of strong character, this is generally only done at the expense of her happiness.

To marry Sir John Kynaston, to be lapped in luxury, to receive all the good things of this world at his hands, and all the while to love his brother with a guilty love, this was no longer possible to Vera Nevill.

"I cannot do it; do not ask me," she said, distractedly. "Your goodness to me half breaks my heart; but it cannot be."

"Why not, child? In a year so much may be altered."

"I shall not alter."

"No; but, even so, you might learn to be happy with me."

"It is not that; you do not understand. I daresay I could be happy enough; that is not why I cannot marry you."

"Why not, then?"

"I dare not," she said, in a low voice.

He drew in his breath. "Ah!" he said, between his teeth, "is it so bad with you as that?"

She bent her head in silent assent.

"That is hard," he said, almost to himself, looking gloomily before him. Presently he spoke again. "Thank you, Vera," he said, rather brokenly. "You are a brave woman and a true one. Many would have taken my all, and given me back only deception and falseness. But you are incapable of that, and—and you fear your own strength; is that it?"

"Whilst he lives," she said, with a sudden burst of passion, "I can know no safety. Never to see his face again can be my only safeguard, and with you I could never be safe. Why, even to bear your name would be to scorch my heart every time I was addressed by it. Forgive me, John," turning to him with a sudden penitence, "I should not have pained you by saying these things; you who have been so infinitely good to me. Go your way across the world, and forget me. Ah! have I not been a curse to every one who bears the name of Kynaston?"

He was silent from very pity. Vera was no longer to him the goddess of his imagination; the one pure and peerless woman, above all other women, such as he had once fancied her to be. But surely she was dearer to him now, in all her weakness and her suffering, than she had ever been on that lofty pedestal of perfection upon which he had once lifted her.

He pitied her so much, and yet he could not help her; her malady was past remedy. And, as she had told him, it was no one's fault—it was only a miserable mistake. He had never had her heart—he saw it plainly now. Many little things in the past, which he had scarcely remembered at the time, came back to his memory—little details of that week at Shadonake, when Maurice had lived in the same house with her, whilst he had only gone over daily to see her. Always, in those days, Maurice had been by her side, and Vera had been dreamily happy, with that fixed look of content with which the presence of the man she loves best beautifies and poetises a woman's face. Sir John was not a very observant man; but now, after it was all over, these things came back to him. The night of the ball, Mrs. Romer's mysterious hints, and his own vague disquietude at her words; later on Maurice's reasonless refusal to be present at his wedding, and Vera's startled face of dismay when he had asked her to go and plead with him to stay for it.

They had struggled against their hearts, it was clear, these poor lovers, whose lives were both tied up and bound before ever they had met each other. But nature had been too strong for them; and the woman, at least, had torn herself free from the chains that had become insupportable to her.

They walked on silently, side by side, round the square. Some girls were playing at lawn-tennis within the garden. There was an occasional shout or a ringing laugh from their fresh young voices. A footman was walking along the pavement opposite, with two fat pugs and a white Spitz in the last stage of obesity in tow, which it was his melancholy duty to parade daily up and down for their mid-day airing. An occasional hansom dashing quickly by broke the stillness of the "empty" hour. Years and years afterwards every detail of the scene came back to his memory with the distinctness of a photograph when he passed once more through the square.

"You have been no curse to me, Vera," he said, presently, breaking the silence. "Do not reproach yourself; it is I who was a madman to deem that I could win your love. Child, we are both sufferers; but time heals most things, and we must learn to wait and be patient. Will you ever marry, Vera?"

"I don't know. Perhaps I may be obliged to. It might be better for me. I cannot say. Don't speak of it. Why, is there nothing else for a woman to do but to marry? John, it must be late. Ought you not to go back—to—to your mother's?"

Insensibly, she resumed a lighter manner. On that other subject there was nothing left to be said. She had had her last chance of becoming John Kynaston's wife. After what she had said to him, she knew he would never ask her again. That chapter in her life was closed for ever.

They parted, unromantically enough, in front of St. George's Hospital. He called a hansom for her, and stood holding her hand, one moment longer, possibly, than was strictly necessary, looking intently into her face as he did so.

"Will you think of me sometimes?"

"Yes, surely."

"Good-bye, Vera."

"Good-bye, John. God bless you wherever you may go."

She got into her hansom, and he told the cabman where to drive her; then he lifted his hat to her with grave politeness, and walked away in the opposite direction. It was a common-place enough parting, and yet these two never saw each other's faces again in this world.

So it is with our lives. Some one or other who has been a part of our very existence for a space goes his way one day, and we see him no more. For a little while our hearts ache, and we shed tears in secret for him who is gone, but by-and-by we get to understand that he is part of our past, never, to be recalled, and after a while we get used to his absence; we think of him less and less, and the death of him, who was once bound up in our very lives, strikes us only with a mild surprise, hardly even tinged with a passing melancholy.

"Poor old so-and-so, he is dead," we say. "What a time it is since we met," and then we go our way and think of him no more.

But Vera knew that, in all human probability, she would never see him again, this man, who had once so nearly been her husband. It was another link of her past life severed. It saddened her, but she knew it was inevitable.

The little letter-case, at all events, was safely hers; and for many a night Vera slept with it under her pillow.

DINNER AT RANELAGH.