"Pooh! don't waste your time upon him. I shall do better than that for you; he is an eldest son, it is true, but Sir Charles looks as young as his son, and is quite as likely to live as long. It is only married women who can afford the luxury of ineligibles. Go and dress, child." Half-an-hour later Mrs. Hazeldine and Miss Nevill are to be found upon two chairs on the broad and shady side of the Row, where a small crowd of men is already gathered around them. Vera, coming up a stranger, and self-invited to the house of her old acquaintance a few weeks ago, had already created a sensation in London. Her rare beauty, the strange charm of her quiet, listless manner, the shade of melancholy which had of late imperceptibly crept over her, aroused a keen admiration and interest in her, even in that city, which more than all others is satiated with its manifold types of beautiful women. There was a rush to get introduced to her; a _furore_ to see her. As she went through a crowd people whispered her name and made way for her to pass, staring at her after a fashion which is totally modern and detestably ill-bred; and yet which, sad token of the _decadence_ of things in these later days, is not beneath the dignity or the manners of persons whose breeding is supposed to be beyond dispute. Already the "new beauty" had been favourably contrasted with the well-known reigning favourites; and it was the loudly expressed opinion of more than one-half of the _jeunesse doree_ of the day that not one of the others could "hold a candle to her, by Jove!" Mrs. Hazeldine was delighted. It was she to whom belonged the honour of bringing this new star into notice; the credit of launching her upon London society was her own. She found herself courted and flattered and made up to in a wholly new and delightful manner. The men besieged her for invitations to her house; the women pressed her to come to theirs. It was all for Miss Nevill's sake, of course, but, even so, it was very pleasant, and Mrs. Hazeldine dearly loved the importance of her position. It came to pass that, whereas she had been somewhat put out at the letter of her old Roman acquaintance, offering to come and stay with her, and had been disposed to resent the advent of her self-invited guest as an infliction, which a few needlessly gushing words in the past had brought upon herself, she had, in a very short time, discovered that she could not possibly exist without her darling Vera, and that she would not and could not let her go back again to her country vicarage.