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 attache 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 _prononce_ 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