There was a rush to get introduced to her; a furore to see her.  As she went through a crowd people whispered her name and made way for her to pass, staring at her after a fashion which is totally modern and detestably ill-bred; and yet which, sad token of the decadence of things in these later days, is not beneath the dignity or the manners of persons whose breeding is supposed to be beyond dispute.

Already the “new beauty” had been favourably contrasted with the well-known reigning favourites; and it was the loudly expressed opinion of more than one-half of the jeunesse doree of the day that not one of the others could “hold a candle to her, by Jove!”

Mrs. Hazeldine was delighted.  It was she to whom belonged the honour of bringing this new star into notice; the credit of launching her upon London society was her own.  She found herself courted and flattered and made up to in a 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.