love affairs; the baby cousins who kissed her when their nurses told them, holding up cherry lips, and smiling with sweet blue eyes--three generations of Disbrowes! Was there one among them all whose love she could believe in as she could in her Irish terrier? Six months without Boroo! It was a dreary time to think of. Boroo was the only creature who could take her mind away from herself and her life's history. He had given her the beatitude of loving and being loved, without romance--without passion--without looking before or after: and, realising the difference this dumb creature made, she could but think with melancholy longing of what a child would have meant in her life. * * * * * And now began the familiar round in the familiar house, with the Disbrowes gathering strong as of old to help and to suggest--to bring to Vera's parties the few great people who had not yet discovered that a Mrs. Rutherford whose wealth had come out of the City could be so particularly attractive, or could give parties that had always a touch of originality that made them worth one's while. These mighty ones told each other that it was the absence of conventionality that made Vera's house so agreeable; while Lady Susan, still playing her part of Chorus, told the mighty ones that it was because her cousin was a poet's daughter, and made an atmosphere of poetry round her. "Vera lives in a world of dreams," she said, "and we are all dreamers, though the horrid everyday world comes between us and our fairest visions. I think that's why we love her." A Princess of the blood royal happened to meet Vera at this time, and became one of her most ardent admirers, lunching or dining in Portland Place at least once a week, and visiting Mrs. Rutherford in her opera box. She had heard of the Roman villa and the Roman parties. "I shall spend next January in Rome on purpose to see more of you," she said, upon which Claude, who was present, begged that her Royal Highness would make the Villa Provana her home whenever she came to the Eternal City; an invitation which her Royal Highness graciously promised to remember. "My sweet girl, you are on the crest of the wave," Lady Okehampton told her niece. "You were never so much the fashion as this year. You ought to be proud of your social success." "I wish I had my dog out of quarantine," was all Vera said. "Get another dog--a Pekinese lion; ever so much smarter than your rough brute." * * * * * The season wore through somehow in perpetual gaieties which the wife hated, but which were essential to the husband's well-being. He had all the racing world, and never missed an important meeting; but when there was no racing he wanted dinner-parties, or crowded evenings, abroad or at home. Later there would be Cowes, where he had a new yacht just out of the builder's yard, waiting to beat every boat in the Channel.