“What does it mean?” Helen asked herself, bitterly.  “Is Sir John a fool or blind that he does not see what is going on under his nose?  She has got him, and his money, and his place; what does she want with Maurice too?  Why can’t she let him alone—­she is taking him from me.”

She watched them eagerly and feverishly.  They stood still for a moment near her; she could not hear what they said, but she could see the look in Maurice’s eyes as he bent towards his partner.

Can a woman who has known what love is ever be mistaken about that?

Vera, all wondering and puzzled, might be but dimly conscious of the meaning in the eyes that met hers; her own drooped, half troubled, half confused, before them.  But to Helen, who knew what love’s signals were, there was no mystery whatever in the passion in his down-bent glance.

“He loves her!” she said to herself, whilst a sharp pang, almost of physical pain, shot through her heart.  “She shall never get him!—­never! never!  Not though one of us die for it!  They are false, both of them.  I swear they shall never be happy together!”

“Why are you not dancing, Mrs. Romer?” said a voice at her elbow.

“I will dance with you, Sir John, if you will ask me,” answers Helen, smiling.

Sir John responds, as in duty bound, by passing his arm around her waist.

“When are you going to be married, Sir John?” she asks him, when the first pause in the dance gives her the opportunity of speech.

Sir John looks rather confused.  “Well, to tell you the truth, I have not spoken to Vera yet.  I have not liked to hurry her—­I thought, perhaps——­”

“Why don’t you speak to her?  A woman never thinks any better of a man for being diffident in such matters.”

“You think not?  But you see Vera is——­”

“Vera is very much like all other women, I suppose; and you are not versed in the ways of the sex.”

Sir John demurred in his own mind as to the first part of her speech.  Vera was certainly not like other women; but then he acknowledged the truth of Mrs. Romer’s last remark thoroughly.

“No, I dare say I don’t know much about women’s ways,” he admitted; “and you think——­”

“I think that Vera would be glad enough to be married as soon as she can.  An engagement is a trying ordeal.  One is glad enough to get settled down.  What is the use of waiting when once everything is arranged?”

Sir John flushed a little.  The prospect of a speedy marriage was pleasant to him.  It was what he had been secretly longing for—­only that, in his slow way, he had not yet been able to suggest it.

“Do you really think she would like it?” he asked, earnestly.

“Of course she would; any woman would.”

“And how long do you think the preparations would take?”

“Oh, a month or three weeks is ample time to get clothes in.”

His pulses beat hotly at the bare possibility of such a thing.  To possess his Vera in so short a time seemed something too great and too wonderful to be true.