She looks up, with returning smiles.
"Yes," she returns, spreading the pretty collection out to view. "Will you look at them? Some are quite pretty."
"Reine has been telling me about your friend," put in Mr. Langton. "He was very kind."
"Not my friend, a mere acquaintance," Vane replies with acerbity. "I saw him a few times in London; he is wild, rather."
"Indeed! and I thought him so nice," Reine says, with dismay.
"So he is nice; wildness, a little, you know, doesn't count," Vane hastens to say, ashamed of the spirit in which he has spoken a moment before. "Sir George is unexceptionable, rich, titled, and all that. He is what the ladies term a most desirable parti. A pity you are a-a-already married, Reine."
"Were I free he could be nothing to me," Reine retorts, a crimson flame coming to her cheeks.
Mr. Langton, struck by something in Vane's tone, looks from one to the other of the flushed faces, and says, laughingly:
"O-ho, my fine young lad, jealous, are you?"
Mr. Charteris is positively indignant.