"Maurice will be here presently, I hope," says his mother, answering the look in her eyes; "he was to come up by the six o'clock train; he will dine at his club and come on here later." Helen's face became radiant, and Lady Kynaston passed on.
Maurice Kynaston's regiment was quartered at Northampton; he came up to town often for the day or for the night, as he could get leave; but his movements were never quite to be depended upon.
Half-an-hour or so more of feverish impatience. Helen watches the gay crowd about her with a feeling of sick weariness. Two members of Parliament are talking of Russian aggression and Turkish misrule close to her; they turn to her presently and include her in the conversation; Mrs. Romer gives her opinion shrewdly and sensibly. An elderly duchess is describing some episode of Royalty's last ball; there is a general laugh, in which Helen joins heartily; a young attaché bends over her and whispers some admiring little speech in her ear, and she blushes and smiles just as if she liked it above all things; while all the time her eyes hardly stray for one second from the open doorway through which Maurice will come, and her heart is saying to itself, over and over again,
"Will he come, will he come?"
He comes at last. Long before the servant, who opens the door to him, has taken his coat and hat from him, Helen catches sight of his handsome head and his broad shoulders through an opening in the crowd. In another minute he is in the room standing irresolute in the doorway, looking round as if to see who is and who is not there to-night.
He is, after all, only a very ordinary type of a good-looking soldierly young Englishman, just such a one as may be seen any day in our parks or our drawing-rooms. He has clearly-cut and rather prononcé features, a strong-built, well made figure, a long moustache, close-shaven cheeks, and eyes that are rather deep-set, and are, when you are near enough to see them well, of a deep blue-gray. In all that Maurice Kynaston is in no way different from scores of other good-looking young men whom we may have met. But there is just something that makes his face a remarkable one: it is a strong-looking face—a face that looks as if he had a will of his own and knew how to stick to it; a face that looks, too, as if he could do and dare much for truth and honour's sake. It is almost stern when he is silent; it can soften into the tenderness of a woman when he speaks.
Look at him now as he catches sight of his mother, and steps forward for a minute to press her loving hands. All the hardness and all the strength are gone out of his face now; he only looks down at her with eyes full of love and gentleness—for life as yet holds nothing dearer or better for him than that little white-haired old woman. Only for a minute, and then he leaves go of her hands, and passes on down the room, speaking to the guests whom he knows.
"He does not see me," says Helen, bitterly, to herself; "he will go on into the next room, and never know that I am here."
But he had seen her perfectly. Next to the woman he most wishes to see in a room, the one whom a man first catches sight of is the woman he would sooner were not there. He had seen Helen the very instant he came in, but he had noticed thankfully that some one was talking to her, and he said to himself that there was no occasion for him to hurry to her side; it was not as if they were openly engaged; there could be no necessity for him to rush into slavery at once; he would speak to her, of course, by-and-by; and whenever he came to her he well knew that he would be equally welcomed: he was so sure of her. Nothing on earth or under Heaven is so fatal to a man's love as that. There was no longer any uncertainty; there was none of the keenness of pursuit dear to the old hunting instinct inherent in man; there was not even the charm of variety in her moods. She was always the same to him; always she pouted a little at first, and looked ill-tempered, and reproached him; and always she came round again at his very first kind word, and poured out her heart in a torrent of worship at his feet. Maurice knew it all by heart, the sulks and the cross words, and then the passionate denials, and the wild protestations of her undying love. He was sorry for her, too, in his way; he was too tender-hearted, too chivalrous, to be anything but kind to her; but though he was sorry, he could not love her; and, oh! how insufferably weary of her he was!
Presently he did come up to her, and took the seat by her side just vacated by the attaché. The little serio-comedy instantly repeated itself.