The old lady's promise to her youngest son was still unfulfilled. She half repented now that she had given him any such promise. What good was she to do by interceding between her son and Miss Nevill? and why was she to lay herself open to the chance of a rebuff from that young lady? It had been a senseless and quixotic idea on Maurice's part altogether. Young women do not take back a jilted lover because the man's mother advises them to do so; nor is a broken-off marriage likely to get itself re-settled in consequence of the interference of a third person. The old lady had taken out her fancy-work, a piece of crewel work such as is the fashion of the day. But she was not fond of work; the leaves of muddy-shaded greens grew but slowly under her fingers, and, truth to say, the occupation bored her. It was artistic, certainly, and it was fashionable; but Lady Kynaston would have been happier over a pair of cross-stitch slippers for her son, or a knitted woollen petticoat for the old woman at her lodge gate. All the same, she took out her crewels and put in a few stitches; but the afternoon was warm, there was a humming of insects in the summer air, a click-clicking from the gardener as he dropped one empty red flower-pot into the other along the edge of the ribbon border, a cawing of rooks from the elms over the wall, a very harmony of soft soothing sounds, just enough to lull worry to rest, not enough to scare drowsiness from one's brain. By degrees, it all became mixed up in a delicious confusion. The rooks, and the bees, and the gardener made one continuous murmur to her, like the swishing of summer waves upon a sandy shore, or the moaning of soft winds in the tree tops. Then the crewel work slipped off her lap, and Lady Kynaston slept. How long she was asleep she could not rightly have said: it might have been an hour, it might have been but twenty minutes; but suddenly she awoke with a start. The rustle of a woman's dress was beside her, and somebody spoke her name. "Lady Kynaston! Oh, I am so sorry I have disturbed you; I did not see you were asleep." The old lady opened her eyes wide, and came back suddenly from dreamland. Vera Nevill stood before her. "Vera, is it _you_? Good gracious! how did you get in? I never even heard the door open." "I came in by the front-door quite correctly," said Vera, smiling and reaching out her hand for a chair, "and was duly announced by the footman; but I had no idea you were asleep." "Only dozing. Sit down, my dear, sit down; I am glad to see you." And, somehow, all the awkwardness of the meeting between the two vanished. It was as though they had parted only yesterday on the most friendly terms. In Vera's absence, Lady Kynaston had thought hard things of her, and had spoken condemning words concerning her; but in her presence all this seemed to be altered.