“Now, really, we must run away.  Come, Maurice, darling, we shall be late for lunch; you and Miss Nevill must finish your confidences another day.  You will come up soon, won’t you?  Any day at five I am in—­good-bye.”  She shook hands with them, and hurried her husband away.

“What an odd thing it is that you and that girl never can meet without having all sorts of private things to say to each other,” she said, angrily, as soon as they were out of earshot.

“Private things! what can you possibly mean, Helen?  Miss Nevill was asking me if I had heard of John’s arrival.”

“I wonder she has the face to mention John’s name!”

“Why, pray?”

“After her disgraceful conduct to him.”

“I think you know very little about Miss Nevill’s conduct, Helen.”

“No, I dare say not.  And you have always known a great deal more about it than anybody else.  That I have always understood, Maurice.”

Maurice looked very black, but he was silent.

“I am very glad I told her about the boudoir,” continued Helen, spitefully.  “How mortified she must feel to think that it has all slipped through her fingers and into mine.  I do hope she will come up to the house.  I shall show her all over it; she will wish she had not been such a fool!”

Maurice was looking at his wife with a singular expression.

“I begin to think you have a very bad heart, Helen,” he said, with a contempt in his voice that was very near akin to disgust.

She looked up, a little startled, and put her hand back, caressingly, under his arm.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Maurice; I don’t want to vex you.  You know very well how much I love you—­and—­and”—­looking up with a little smile into his face that was meant as a peace offering—­“I suppose I am jealous!”

“Suppose you wait to be jealous until I give you cause to be so,” answered her husband, gravely and coldly, but not altogether unkindly, for he meant to do his duty to her, God helping him, as far as he knew how.

But all the way home he walked silently by her side, and wondered whether the sacrifice he had made of his love to his duty had been, indeed, worth it.

It had been hard for him, this first meeting with Vera.  He had felt it more than he had believed possible.  Instinctively he had realized what she must have suffered; and that her sufferings were utterly beyond his power to console.  It began to come into his mind that, meaning to deal rightly by Helen, he had dealt cruelly and badly by Vera.  He had sacrificed the woman he loved to the woman he did not love.

Had it, indeed, been such a right and praiseworthy action on his part?  Maurice lost himself in speculation as to what would have happened had he broken his faith to Helen, and allowed himself to follow the dictates of his heart rather than those of his conscience.

That was what Vera had done for his sake; but what he had been unable to do for hers.