Maurice Kynaston’s regiment was quartered at Northampton; he came up to town often for the day or for the night, as he could get leave; but his movements were never quite to be depended upon.

Half-an-hour or so more of feverish impatience.  Helen watches the gay crowd about her with a feeling of sick weariness.  Two members of Parliament are talking of Russian aggression and Turkish misrule close to her; they turn to her presently and include her in the conversation; Mrs. Romer gives her opinion shrewdly and sensibly.  An elderly duchess is describing some episode of Royalty’s last ball; there is a general laugh, in which Helen joins heartily; a young attache bends over her and whispers some admiring little speech in her ear, and she blushes and smiles just as if she liked it above all things; while all the time her eyes hardly stray for one second from the open doorway through which Maurice will come, and her heart is saying to itself, over and over again,

“Will he come, will he come?”

He comes at last.  Long before the servant, who opens the door to him, has taken his coat and hat from him, Helen catches sight of his handsome head and his broad shoulders through an opening in the crowd.  In another minute he is in the room standing irresolute in the doorway, looking round as if to see who is and who is not there to-night.

He is, after all, only a very ordinary type of a good-looking soldierly young Englishman, just such a one as may be seen any day in our parks or our drawing-rooms.  He has clearly-cut and rather prononce features, a strong-built, well made figure, a long moustache, close-shaven cheeks, and eyes that are rather deep-set, and are, when you are near enough to see them well, of a deep blue-gray.  In all that Maurice Kynaston is in no way different from scores of other good-looking young men whom we may have met.  But there is just something that makes his face a remarkable one:  it is a strong-looking face—­a face that looks as if he had a will of his own and knew how to stick to it; a face that looks, too, as if he could do and dare much for truth and honour’s sake.  It is almost stern when he is silent; it can soften into the tenderness of a woman when he speaks.

Look at him now as he catches sight of his mother, and steps forward for a minute to press her loving hands.  All the hardness and all the strength are gone out of his face now; he only looks down at her with eyes full of love and gentleness—­for life as yet holds nothing dearer or better for him than that little white-haired old woman.  Only for a minute, and then he leaves go of her hands, and passes on down the room, speaking to the guests whom he knows.

“He does not see me,” says Helen, bitterly, to herself; “he will go on into the next room, and never know that I am here.”