By degrees, it all became mixed up in a delicious confusion.  The rooks, and the bees, and the gardener made one continuous murmur to her, like the swishing of summer waves upon a sandy shore, or the moaning of soft winds in the tree tops.

Then the crewel work slipped off her lap, and Lady Kynaston slept.

How long she was asleep she could not rightly have said:  it might have been an hour, it might have been but twenty minutes; but suddenly she awoke with a start.

The rustle of a woman’s dress was beside her, and somebody spoke her name.

“Lady Kynaston!  Oh, I am so sorry I have disturbed you; I did not see you were asleep.”

The old lady opened her eyes wide, and came back suddenly from dreamland.  Vera Nevill stood before her.

“Vera, is it you?  Good gracious! how did you get in?  I never even heard the door open.”

“I came in by the front-door quite correctly,” said Vera, smiling and reaching out her hand for a chair, “and was duly announced by the footman; but I had no idea you were asleep.”

“Only dozing.  Sit down, my dear, sit down; I am glad to see you.”  And, somehow, all the awkwardness of the meeting between the two vanished.  It was as though they had parted only yesterday on the most friendly terms.  In Vera’s absence, Lady Kynaston had thought hard things of her, and had spoken condemning words concerning her; but in her presence all this seemed to be altered.

There was something so unspeakably refreshing and soothing about Vera; there was a certain quiet dignity in her movements, a calm serenity in her manner, which made it difficult to associate blame and displeasure with her.  Faults she might have, but they could never be mean or ignoble ones; there was nothing base or contemptible about her.  The pure, proud profile, the broad grave brow, the eyes that, if a trifle cold, were as true withal as the soul that looked out, sometimes earnestly, sometimes wistfully, from their shadowy depths; everything about her bade one judge her, not so much by her actions, which were sometimes incomprehensible, but by a certain standard that she herself created in the minds of all who knew her.

Lady Kynaston had called her a jilt and a heartless coquette; she had made no secret of saying, right and left, how badly she had behaved:  what shameful and discreditable deductions might be drawn from her conduct towards Sir John.  Yet, the very instant she set eyes upon her, she felt sorry for the hard things she had said of her, and ashamed of herself that she should have spoken them.

Vera drew forward a chair, and sat down near her.  The dress she wore was white, of some clear and delicate material, softened with creamy lace; it had been one of kind-hearted Cissy Hazeldine’s many presents to her.  Looking at her, Lady Kynaston thought what a lovely vision of youth and beauty she made in the sombre quiet of the little room.