Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/238

 But we've had no time to plan things. Do help us. Do give us this one chance."

So Terry had given the one chance, hardly knowing whether she were right or wrong, or what was her position morally and legally. Sometimes she regretted what she had done; but as Nora asked, "Have I abused your kindness?" she was conscious of no regret. She and the girl kissed each other; and, wrapping a lace scarf round her head and shoulders, Nora Verney went down to sit on the balcony.

Hardly any one was there. Though a number of people were stopping in the hotel, they mostly sat in the reading-room, for fear of the night air, glancing at the papers or playing games, or else they went to bed in default of something more amusing to do.

Nora glanced about hurriedly, and was glad not to see Sir Ian Hereward or Major Smedley. Two German ladies were talking very fast and both at the same time about their babies and servants at home; and there was a young man, whom Terry and Nora had noticed once or twice following their road since Chamounix. If he had not been such an inoffensive, fussy little fellow, apparently a Frenchman of the bourgeois class, the girl might have regarded him with some anxiety; but she and Miss Ricardo had decided that he was a consumptive Frenchman who had been ordered to travel for his health. He had never appeared to take the slightest interest in them, or their