Young Wilde plucked at the grass again, and chewed a daisy up almost viciously.  There was a supreme selfishness in the way she had of perpetually harping upon her lack of love for him.

“There is always some fellow or other hanging about you,” grumbles the young man, irritably; “you are an inveterate flirt!”

“No woman is worthy of the name who is not!” retorts Vera, laughing.

“I hate a flirt,” angrily.

“This is very amusing when you know that your flirtation with Mrs. Hazeldine is a chronic disease of two years’ standing!”

“Pooh!—­mere child’s play on both sides, and you know it is!  You are very different; you lead a fellow on till he doesn’t know whether his very soul is his own, and then you turn round and snap your fingers in his face and send him to the devil.”

“What an awful accusation!  Pray give me an instance of a victim to this shocking conduct.”

“Why, there’s that wretched little Frenchman whom you are playing the same game with that you have already done with me; he follows you like a shadow.”

“Poor Monsieur D’Arblet!” laughed Vera, and then grew suddenly serious.  “But do you know, Mr. Wilde, it is a very singular thing about that man—­I can’t think why he follows me about so.”

“Can’t you!” very grimly.

“I assure you the man is in no more love with me than—­than——­”

“I am!  I suppose you will say next.”

“Oh dear, no, you are utterly incorrigible and quite in earnest; but Monsieur D’Arblet is pretending to be in love with me.”

“He makes a very good pretence of it, at all events.  Here he comes, confound him!  If I had known Mrs. Hazeldine had asked him, I would never have come.”

At which Vera, who had heard these outbursts of indignant jealousy before, and knew how little poor Denis meant the terrible threats he uttered, only laughed with the pitiless amusement of a woman who knows her own power.

Lucien D’Arblet came towards her smiling, and sank down into a vacant basket-chair by her side with the air of a man who knows himself to be welcome.

He had been paying a great deal of attention latterly to the beautiful Miss Nevill; he had followed her about everywhere, and had made it patent in every public place where he had met her that she alone was the sole aim and object of his thoughts.  And yet, with it all, Monsieur Le Vicomte was only playing a part, and not only that, but he was pretty certain that she knew it to be so.  He gazed rapturously into her beautiful face, he lowered his voice tenderly in speaking to her, he pressed her hand when she gave it to him, and even on occasions he raised it furtively to his lips; but, with all this, he knew perfectly well that she was not one whit deceived by him.  She no more believed him to be in love with her than he believed it of himself.  She was clever and beautiful, and he admired and even liked her, but in the beginning of their acquaintance Monsieur D’Arblet had had no thought of making her the object of any sentimental attentions.  He had been driven to it by a discovery that he had made concerning her character.