Vera Nevill

THE LAY RECTOR.

In the churchyard at Sutton-in-the-Wold was a monument which, for downright ugliness and bad taste, could hardly find its fellow in the whole county. It was a wonderful and marvellous structure of gray granite, raised upon a flight of steps, and consisted of an object like unto Cleopatra's Needle surmounting a family tea-urn. It had been erected by one Nathaniel Crupps, a well-to-do farmer in the parish, upon the death of his second wife. The first partner of his affections had been previously interred also in the same spot, but it was not until the death of the second Mrs. Crupps, who was undoubtedly his favourite, that Nathaniel bethought him of immortalizing the memory of both ladies by one bold stroke of fancy, as exemplified by this portentous granite monstrosity. On it the virtues of both wives were recorded, as it was touchingly and naïvely stated, by their "sorrowing husband with strict impartiality."

It was upon this graceful structure that Vera Nevill leant one foggy morning in the first week of November, and surveyed the church in front of her. She was not engaged in any sentimental musings appropriate to the situation. She was neither meditating upon the briefness of life in general, nor upon the many virtues of the ladies of the Crupps family, over whose remains she was standing. She was simply waiting for Jimmy Griffiths, and looking at the church because she had nothing else to look at. The church, indeed, afforded her some food for reflection, purely, I regret to state, of a practical and mundane character. It was a large and handsome building, with a particularly fine old tower, that was sadly out of repair; but the chancel was a modern and barn-like structure of brick and plaster, which ought, of course, to be entirely swept away, and a new and more appropriate one built in its stead. The chancel belonged, as most chancels do, to the lay rector, and the lay rector was Sir John Kynaston.

As soon as it became bruited abroad that Sir John was coming down to the old house for the winter, there was a general excitement throughout the parish, but no one partook of the excitement to a greater degree than did its worthy vicar.

It was the dream of Eustace Daintree's life to get his church restored, and more especially to get the chancel rebuilt. There had been a restoration fund accumulating for some years, and could he have had the slightest assistance from the lay rector concerning the chancel, Mr. Daintree would assuredly have sent for the architect, and the builders, and the stone-cutters, and have begun his church at once with that beautiful disregard of the future chances of being able to get the money to pay for it, and with that sparrow-like trust in Providence, which is usually displayed by those clerical gentlemen who, in the face of an estimate which tells them that eight thousand pounds will be the sum total required, are ready to dash into bricks and mortar upon the actual possession of eight hundred. But there was the chancel! To leave it as it was whilst restoring the nave would have been too heart-rending; to touch it without Sir John Kynaston's assistance, impossible and illegal. Several times Eustace Daintree had applied to Sir John in writing upon the subject. The answers had been vague and unsatisfactory. He would promise nothing at all; he would come down and see it some day possibly, and then he would be able to say more about it; meanwhile, for the present, things must remain as they were.

When, therefore, the news was known that Sir John was actually coming down, Mr. Daintree's thoughts flew at once to his beloved church.

"Now we shall get the chancel done at last," he said to his wife gleefully, rubbing his hands. And the very day after Sir John's arrival Eustace went up to the Hall after dinner to see him upon the subject.

"Had you not better wait a day or two?" counselled his more prudent wife. "Wait till you meet him, naturally. You don't very well know what kind of man he is, nor how he will take it."

"What is the use of waiting? I knew him well enough eight years ago; he was a pleasant fellow enough then. He won't kill me, I suppose, and the chancel is a disgrace—a positive disgrace to him. It is my duty to point it out to him; the thing can't afford to wait, it ought to be done at once."

So he disregarded Marion's advice, and Vera helped him on with his great-coat in the hall, and wound his woollen comforter round his neck, and bade him good luck on his expedition to Kynaston.

He came back sorrowful and abashed. Sir John had been civil, very civil; he had insisted on his sitting down at his table—for he had apparently not finished his dinner—and had opened a bottle of fine old port in his honour. He had inquired about many of the old people, and had expressed a friendly interest in the parish generally; but with regard to the chancel, he had been as adamant.

He did not see, he had said, why it could not go on well enough as it was. If it was in bad repair, Davis should see to it; a man with a barrowful of bricks and a shovelful of mortar should be sent down. That, of course, it was his duty to do. Sir John did not understand that more could possibly be expected of him. The chancel had been good enough for his father, it would probably be good enough for him; it would last his time, he supposed, in any case.

But the soul of the Rev. Eustace became as water within him. It was not of a barrowful of bricks and shovelful of mortar that he had been dreaming, but of lancet windows and stone mouldings; of polished oak rafters within, and of high gables and red tiles without.

He came down from the Hall disheartened and discomfited, with all the spirit crushed out of him; and the ladies of his family, for once, were of one mind about the matter. There arose about him a storm of indignation and a gush of sympathy, which could not fail to soothe him somewhat. Eustace went to rest that night sore and heavy-hearted, it is true, but with all the damnatory verses in the Scriptures concerning the latter end of the "rich man" ringing in his head; a course of meditation which, upon the whole, afforded him a distinct sensation of consolation and comfort.

And the next morning in the churchyard Vera leant against the Cruppsian sarcophagus, and thought about it.

"Poor old Eustace," she said to herself; "how I wish I were very rich, and could do his chancel for him! How pleased he would be; and what a good fellow he is! How odd it is to think what different aims there are in people's lives! There are Eustace and Marion simply miserable this morning because of that hideous barn they can't get rid of. Well, it is hideous certainly; but it doesn't disturb my peace of mind in the least. What a mean curmudgeon Sir John must be, by the way! I should not have thought it from his photograph; such a frank, open, generous face he seemed to have. However, we all know how photographs can mislead one. I wonder where that wretched boy can be!"

The "wretched boy" was Jimmy Griffiths afore-mentioned; he was the youth who was in the habit of blowing the organ. The schoolmaster, who was also the organist, was ill, and had sent word to Mr. Daintree that he would be unable to be at the church on the morrow. Eustace had asked Vera to take his place. Now Vera was not accomplished; she neither sang, nor played, nor painted in water-colours; but she had once learnt to play the organ a little—a very little. So she professed herself willing to undertake the office of organ-player for once, that is to say, if she found she could do it pretty well, only she must go into church and try all the chants over. So Jimmy Griffiths was sent for from the village, and Vera, with the church key in her pocket, strolled idly into the churchyard, and, whilst awaiting him, meditated upon the tomb of the two Mrs. Crupps.

She had come in from the private gate of the vicarage, and the vicarage garden—very bleak and very desolate by this time—lay behind her. To the right, the public pathway led down through the lych-gate into the village. Anybody coming up from the village could have seen her as she stood against the granite monument. She wore a long fur cloak down almost to her feet, and a round fur cap upon her head; they were her sister Theodora's sables, which she had left to her. Old Mrs. Daintree always told her she ought to sell them, a remark which made Vera very angry. Her back was turned to the village and to the lych-gate, and she was looking up at poor Eustace's bug-bear—the barn-like chancel.

Suddenly somebody came up close behind her and spoke to her.

"Can you tell me, please, where the keys of the church are kept?"

A gentleman stood beside her, lifting his hat as he spoke. Vera started a little at being so suddenly spoken to, but answered quite quietly and unconfusedly,

"They are generally kept at the vicarage, or else in the clerk's cottage."

"Thank you; then I will go and fetch them."

"But they are not there now," said Vera, as though finishing her former remark.

"If you will kindly tell me where I can find them," continued the stranger, very politely, "I will go and get them."

"I am afraid you can't do that," said Vera, with just the vestige of a smile playing upon her face, "because they are at present in my pocket."

"Oh, I beg your pardon;" and the stranger smiled outright.

"But I will let you into the church, if you like; if that is what you wish?" she said, quite simply.

"Yes, if you please." Vera moved up the path to the porch, the gentleman following her. She turned the key in the heavy door and held it open. "If you will go in, please, I will take the keys; I must not leave them in the door." The gentleman went in, and Vera looked at him as he passed by.

Most uninteresting! was her verdict as he passed her; forty at the very least! What a beautiful situation for an adventure! What a romantic incident! And how excessively tame is the dénouement! A middle-aged gentleman, tall and slightly bald, with close-cropped whiskers and grave, set features; who on earth could he be? A stranger, evidently; perhaps he was staying at some neighbouring country house, and had walked over to Sutton for the sake of exercise; but what on earth could he want to see the church for!

The stranger stood just inside the door with his hat off, looking at her.

"Won't you come in and show it to me?" he asked, rather hesitatingly.

"The church? oh, certainly, if you like, but there is nothing to see in it." She came in, closing the door behind her, and stood beside him. It did not strike her as unusual or interesting, or as anything, in fact, but the most common-place and unexciting proceeding, that she should do the honours of the church to this middle-aged stranger.

They stood side by side in the centre of the small nave with all the ugly, high, red-cushioned pews around them. Vera looked up and down the familiar place as though she and not he were seeing it for the first time; from the row of whitewashed pillars to the staring white windows; from the hatchment on the plastered walls to the disfiguring gallery along the west end.

"It is very hideous," she said, almost apologetically, "especially the chancel; Mr. Daintree wants to have it restored, but I suppose that can't be done at all now."

"Why can't it be done?"

"Oh, because nothing can be done unless the chancel is pulled down; that belongs to the lay rector, and he has refused to restore it."

"Sir John Kynaston is the lay rector."

"Yes!" Vera looked a little startled; "do you know him?"

The gentleman passed his hand over his chin.

"Slightly," he answered, not looking at her.

"It is a pity he cannot be brought to see how necessary it is, for he certainly ought to do it," continued Vera. "You see I cannot help being interested in it because Mr. Daintree is such a good man, and has worked so hard to get up money to begin the rest of the church. He had quite counted upon the chancel being done, and now he is so much disappointed; but, I beg your pardon, this cannot interest you."

"But it interests me very much. Why does not somebody put it in this light to Sir John; he would not surely refuse?"

"My brother-in-law, Mr. Daintree, I mean, did ask him last night, and he would not promise to do anything."

The stranger suddenly left her side and walked up the church by himself into the chancel. He went straight up to the east end and made a minute examination apparently of the wall; after that, he came slowly down again, looking carefully into every corner and cranny from the whitewashed ceiling down to the damp and uneven stone paving at his feet; Vera thought him a very odd person, and wondered what he was thinking about.

He came back to her and stood before her looking at her for a minute. And then he made this most remarkable speech:

"If you were to ask Sir John Kynaston this he would restore the chancel!" he said.

For half-a-second Vera stared at him in blank amazement. Then she turned haughtily round, and flushed hotly with angry indignation.

"There is nothing more to see in the church," she said, shortly, and walked straight out of it.

The stranger had followed her; when they reached the churchyard he said to her, quite humbly,

"I beg your pardon; Miss Nevill; how unlucky I am to have made you angry, to begin with."

Vera looked at him in astonishment. How did he know her name; who was he? He was looking at her with such a penitent and distressed expression, that for the first time she noticed what a kind face it was. Then, before she could answer him, she saw her brother-in-law over the paling of the vicarage garden, coming towards them.

The stranger saw him, too, and lifted his hat to her.

"Good-bye," he said, rather hastily; "I did not mean to offend you; don't be angry about it;" and, before she could say a word, he turned quickly down the churchyard through the lych-gate into the road, and was gone.

"Vera," said Eustace Daintree, coming leisurely up to her through the garden gate, "how on earth do you come to be talking to Sir John; has he been saying anything to you about the chancel?"

"Who was it? who did you say?" cried Vera, aghast.

"Why, Sir John Kynaston, to be sure. Did you not know it was he?"

She was thunderstruck. "Are you quite sure?" she faltered.

"Why, of course! I saw him only last night, you know. I wonder why he went off in such a hurry when he saw me?"

Vera was walking silently down the garden towards the house by his side. The thought in her mind was, "If that was Sir John Kynaston, who then is the photograph I found in the writing-table drawer?"

"What did he say to you, Vera? How came you to be talking to him?" pursued her brother-in-law.

"I only let him into the church. I did not know who he was. I told him the chancel ought to be restored—by himself."

Eustace Daintree looked dismayed.

"How very unfortunate. It will, perhaps, make him still more decided to do nothing."

Vera smiled a little to herself. "I hope not, Eustace," was all she said. But although she said no word of it to him, she knew at her heart that his chancel would be restored for him.

Late that night Vera sat alone by her fireside, and thought over her morning's adventure; and once again she said to herself, with a little regretful sigh, "Whose, then, was the photograph?" But she put the thought away from her.

After all, she said to herself, it made no difference. He was still Sir John Kynaston of Kynaston Hall, and just as well worth a woman's while to marry. She had made some mistake, that was all; and the real Sir John was not the least romantic or interesting to look at, but Kynaston Hall belonged to him all the same.

They were not very exalted or very much to be admired, these dreams of Vera's girlhood. But neither were they quite so coarse and unlovely as would have been those of a purely mercenary woman. She was free from the vulgarity of desiring the man's money and his name from any desire to raise herself above her relations, or to feed her own vanity and ambition at their expense. It was only that, marriage being a necessity for her, to marry anything but a rich man would have been, with her tastes and the habits to which she had been brought up, the sheerest and rankest folly. She thought she could make a good wife to any man whose life she would like to share—that is to say, a life of ease and affluence. She knew she would make a very bad wife to a poor man. Therefore she determined upon so carving out her own fortunes that she should not make a failure of herself. It was worldly wisdom of the purest and simplest character.

She was as much determined as ever upon winning Kynaston's owner if he was to be won. Only she wished, with a little sigh, that he had happened to be the man in the photograph. She hardly knew why she wished it—but the wish was there.

She sat bending over her fire, with all her soft, dark hair loose about her face and flowing down her back, and her eyes fixed dreamily upon the flames. Her past life came back to her, her old life in the whirl and turmoil of pleasure which had suited her so well. She compared it, a little drearily, with the present; with the humdrum routine of the vicarage; with the parish talk about the old women and the schools; and the small tittle-tattle about the schoolmaster and the choir, going on around her all day; with old Mrs. Daintree's sharp tongue and her sister's meek rejoinders. She was very tired of it. It did not amuse her. She was not exactly discontented with her lot. Eustace and her sister were very kind to her, and she loved them dearly; but she did not live their life—she was with them, but not of them. As for herself, for her interests and her delights, they stagnated amongst them all. How long was it to last?

And Kynaston, by contrast, appeared very fair, with its smooth lawns and its terrace walks, and its great desolate rooms, that she would so well understand how to fill with life and brightness; but Kynaston's master counted for very little to her. She knew the power of her own beauty so well. Experience had taught her that Vera Nevill had but to smile and to win; it had been so easy to her to be loved and wooed.

"Only," she said to herself, as she stood up before her fire, and stretched up her arms so that her long hair fell back like a cloud around her, "only he is a different sort of man to what I had pictured him. It will, perhaps, not be such an easy matter to win a man like that."

She went to bed and dreamt—not of Sir John Kynaston—but of the man whose pictured face once seen had haunted her ever since.

"LITTLE PITCHERS."

It was an easier matter to win him than Vera thought.

A week later Sir John Kynaston sat alone by his library fire, after breakfast, and owned to himself that he had fallen hopelessly and helplessly in love with Vera Nevill.

This was all the more remarkable because Sir John was not a very young man, and that he was, moreover, not of a nature to do things rashly or impulsively.

He was, on the contrary, of a slow and hesitating disposition. He was in the habit of weighing his words and his actions before he spoke or acted, his mind was tardy to take in new thoughts and new ideas, and he was cautious and almost sluggish in taking any steps in a strange and unaccustomed direction.

Nevertheless, in this matter of Vera, he had succumbed to his fate with all the uncalculating blindness of a boy in his teens.

Vera was like no other woman he had ever seen; she was as far removed above common young-ladyhood as Raphael's Madonnas are beyond and above Greuze's simpering maidens; there could be no other like her—she was a queen, a goddess among women.

From the very first moment that he had caught sight of her on the terrace outside his house her absolute mastery over him had begun. Her rare beauty, her quiet smile, her slow, indolent movements, the very tones of her rich, low voice, all impressed him in a strange and wonderful manner. She seemed to him to be the incarnation of everything that was pure and elevated in womanhood. To have imagined that such a one as she could have thought of his wealth or his position would have been the rankest blasphemy in his eyes.

He raised her up on a pedestal of his own creating, and then he fell down before her and adored her.

John Kynaston had but little knowledge of women. Shy and retiring in manner—somewhat suspicious and distrustful also—he had kept out of their way through life. Once, in very early manhood, he had been deceived; he had become engaged to a girl whom he afterwards discovered to have accepted him only for his money and his name, whilst her heart really belonged to another and a poorer man. He had shaken himself free of her, with horror and disgust, and had sworn to himself that he would never be so betrayed again. Since then he had been suspicious—and not without just cause—of the young ladies who had smiled upon him, and of their mothers, who had pressed him with gracious invitations to their houses. He was a rich man, but he did not mean to be loved for his wealth; he said to himself that, sooner than be so, he would die unmarried and leave to Maurice the task of keeping up the old name and the old family.

But he had seen Vera; and all at once all the old barriers of pride and reserve were broken down! Here was the one woman on earth who realized his dreams, the one woman whom he would wait and toil for, even as Jacob waited and toiled for Rachel!

He had come down to Kynaston to hunt; but hitherto hunting had been very little in his thoughts. He had been down to the vicarage once or twice, he had met her once in the lanes, and he had longed for a glimpse of her daily; as yet he had done nothing else. He opened his letters on this particular morning slowly and abstractedly, tossing them into the fire, one after the other, as he read them, and not paying very much attention to their contents.

There was one, however, from his brother, "I wish you would ask me down to Kynaston for a week or two, old fellow," wrote Maurice. "I know you would mount me—now I have got rid of all my horses to please you—and I should like a glimpse of the old country. Write and tell me if I shall come down on Monday."

This letter Sir John did pay attention to. He rose hastily, as though not a moment was to be lost, and answered it:—

"Dear Maurice,—I can't possibly have you down here yet. My own plans are very uncertain, and if you are going to take your leave after Christmas, you had far better not go away from your work now. If I am still here in January, I shall be delighted if you will come down, and will mount you as much as you like."

He was happier when he had written and directed this letter.

"I must be alone just now," he murmured. "I could not bear Maurice's chatter—it would jar upon me."

Then he put on his hat and strolled out. He looked in at the stables one minute, and called the head groom to him.

"Wright, did not Mr. Beavan say, when I bought that new bay mare of him, that she had carried a lady to hounds?"

"Yes, Sir John; Miss Beavan rode her last season."

"Ah, she is a good rider. Well, I wish you would put a side-saddle and a skirt on her, and exercise her this morning. I might want to—to lend her to a lady; but she must be perfectly quiet. You can take her out every day this week."

Sir John went on his way, leaving the worthy Wright a prey to speculation as to who the mysterious lady might be for whom the bay mare was to be exercised.

His master, meanwhile, bent his steps almost instinctively to the vicarage.

Vera was undergoing a periodical persecution concerning Mr. Gisburne at the hands of old Mrs. Daintree. She was standing up by the table arranging some scarlet berries and some long trails of ivy which the children had brought to her in a vase. Tommy and Minnie stood by watching her intently; Mrs. Daintree sat at a little distance, her lap full of undarned socks, and rated her.

"It is not as if you were a girl who could earn her living in case of need. There is not one single thing you can do."

"Aunt Vera can make nosegays of berries boofully, grandma," interpolates Tommy, earnestly; "can't she, Minnie?"

"Yes, she do," assented the smaller child, with emphasis.

"I wasn't speaking to you, Tom; little boys should be—"

"Heard and not seen," puts in Tommy, rapidly; "you always say that, grandma."

Vera laughs softly. Mrs. Daintree goes on with her lecture.

"Many girls in your position are very accomplished; can teach the piano, and history, and the elements of Latin; but it seems to me you have been brought up in idleness."

"Idleness is not to be despised in its way," answers Vera, composedly. "Another bit of ivy, Tommy. What shall I do, Mrs. Daintree?" she continues, whilst her deft fingers wind the trailing greenery round and round the glass stem of the vase. "Shall I go down to the village school and sit at the feet of Mr. Dee? I have no doubt he could teach me a great many things I know nothing about."

"That is nonsense; of course I don't mean that you can educate yourself to any purpose now; it is too late for that; but you need not, at all events, turn up your nose at the blessings that Providence sets before you; and I must say, that for a young woman deliberately to choose to remain a burden upon her friends, betokens an amount of servility and a lack of the spirit of independence which I should not have supposed possible even in you!"

"What do you want me to do?" said Vera, without a sign of impatience. "Shall I walk over to Tripton this afternoon, and make a low curtsey to Mr. Gisburne, and say to him very politely, 'Here is an idle and penniless young woman who would be very pleased to stop here and marry you!' Would that be the way to do it, Mrs. Daintree?"

"No, no, no!" imperatively from Tommy, who was listening with rapidly crimsoning cheeks; "you shall not go and stop at Tripton, and tell Mr. Gisburne you will marry him!"

Vera laughed. "No, Tommy, I don't think I will; not, that is to say, if you are a good boy. I think I can do something better than that with myself!" she added, softly, as if to herself. Mrs. Daintree caught the words.

"And what better, pray? What better chance are you ever likely to have? Let me tell you, bachelors who want penniless wives don't grow on the blackberry bushes down here! If you were not so selfish and so conceited, you would see where your duty to my son, who is supporting you, lay. You would see that to be married to an honest, upright man like Albert Gisburne is a chance that most girls would catch at only too thankfully."

The old lady had raised her voice; she spoke loud and angrily; she was rapidly working herself into a passion. Tommy, accustomed to family rows, stood on the hearthrug, looking excitedly from his grandmother to his aunt. He was a precocious child; he did not quite understand, and yet he understood partly. He knew that his grandmother was scolding Vera, and telling her she was to go away and marry Mr. Gisburne. That Vera should go away! That, in itself, was sufficiently awful. Tommy adored Vera with all the intensity of his childish soul; that she should go away from him to Mr. Gisburne seemed to him the most terrible visitation that could possibly happen. His little heart swelled within him; the tears were very near his eyes.

At this very minute the door softly opened, and Sir John Kynaston, whose ring had been unheard in the commotion, was ushered in.

Tommy thought he saw a deliverer, specially sent in by Providence for the occasion. He made one spring at him and caught him round the legs, after the manner of enthusiastic small boys.

"Please—please—don't let grandmamma send aunt Vera away to Tripton to marry Mr. Gisburne! He has red hair, and I hate him; and aunt Vera doesn't want to go, she wants to stop at home and do something better!"

A moment of utter confusion on all sides; then Vera, crimson to the roots of her hair, stepped forward and held out her hand.

"Little pitchers have long ears!" she said, laughing: "and Tommy is a very silly little boy."

"No, but, aunt Vera, you said—you said," cried the child. What further revelations he might have made were fortunately not destined to be known. His aunt placed her hand unceremoniously over his small, eager mouth, and hustled both children in some haste out of the room.

Meanwhile, Sir John, looking the picture of distress and embarrassment, had shaken hands with the old lady, and inquired if he could speak with her son.

"Mr. Daintree is in his study; I will take you to him," she said, rising, and led him away out of the room. She looked at him sharply as she showed him into the study; and it did come across her mind, "I wonder what you come so often for." Still, no thought of Vera entered into her head. Sir John was the great man of the place, the squire, the potentate in the hollow of whose hand lay Sutton-in-the-Wold and all its inhabitants, and Vera was a nobody in the old lady's eyes,—a waif, whose presence was of no account at all. Sir John was no more likely to notice her than any of the village girls; except, indeed, that he would speak politely to her because she was Eustace's sister-in-law. Still, it did come across her mind to wonder what he came so often for.

Five minutes later the two gentlemen were seen going across the vicarage garden towards the church.

They remained there a very long time, more than half an hour. When they came back Marion had finished her housekeeping and was in the room busy cutting out unbleached calico into poor men's shirts, on the grand piano, an instrument which she maintained had been specially and originally called into existence for no other purpose. Mrs. Daintree still sat in her chimney corner. Vera was at the writing-table with her back to the room, writing a letter.

The vicar came in with his face all aglow with excitement and delight; his wife looked up at him quickly, she saw that something unusual and of a pleasant character had happened.

"My dear Marion, we must both thank our good friend, Sir John. I am happy to tell you that he has consented to restore the chancel."

"Oh, Sir John, how can we ever thank you enough!" cried Marion, coming forward breathlessly and pressing his hands in eager gratitude. Sir John looked as if he didn't want to be thanked, but he glanced towards the writing-table. Vera's back was turned; she made no sign of having heard.

"I am sure I had given up all hopes of it altogether," continued the vicar. "You gave such an unqualified refusal when I spoke to you about it before, I never dreamt that you would be induced to change your mind."

"Some one—I mean—I thought it over—and—and it was presented to my notice—in another light," stammered Sir John, somewhat confusedly.

"And it is most kind, most generous of you to allow it to be done in my own way, according to the plans I had wished to follow."

"Oh, I am quite sure you will understand it much better than I am likely to do. Besides, I have no time to attend to it; it will suit me better to leave it entirely in your hands."

"Would you not like to see the plans Mr. Woodley drew for us last year?"

"Not now, I think, thank you; I must be going; another time, Mr. Daintree; I can't wait just now."

He was standing irresolute in the middle of the room. He looked again wistfully at Vera's back. Was it possible that she was not going to give him one word, one look, when surely she must know by whose influence he had been induced to consent to rebuild the chancel!

Almost in despair he moved to the door, and just as he reached it, when his hand was already on the handle, she looked up. Her eyes, all softened with pleasure and gratitude, nay, almost with tenderness, met his. He stopped suddenly short.

"Miss Nevill, might I ask you to walk with me as far as the clerk's cottage? I—I forget which it is!"

It was the lamest and most blundering excuse. Any six-year-old child in the village could have pointed out the cottage to him. Mrs. Daintree looked up in astonishment. Vera blushed rosy red; Eustace, man-like, saw nothing, and began eagerly,

"I am walking that way myself; we can go together——" Suddenly his coat tails were violently pulled from behind. "Quite impossible, Eustace; I want you at home for the next hour," says Marion, quietly standing by his side, with a look of utter innocence upon her face. The vicar, almost throttled by the violence of the assault upon his garments, perceived that, in some mysterious manner, he had said something he ought not to have said. He deemed it wisest to subside into silence.

Vera rose from the writing-table. "I will go and put my hat on," she said, quietly, and left the room.

Three minutes later she and Sir John went out of the front door together.

"Well, that is the oddest fellow I ever came across in my life," said Eustace, fairly puzzled as soon as he was gone. "It is my belief," tapping his forehead significantly, "that he is a little touched here. I don't believe he quite knows what he is talking about. Why, the other night he would have nothing to say to the chancel, wouldn't even listen to me, cut me so short about it I really couldn't venture to pursue the subject; and here he comes, ten days later, all of his own accord, and proposes to do it exactly as it ought to be done, in the best and most expensive way—purbeck columns round the lancet windows, and all, Marion, just what I wanted; gives me absolute carte blanche about it. I only hope he won't take a fresh fancy into his head and change his mind again."

"Perhaps he found he would make himself unpopular if he did not do it," suggested his mother.

Marion held her tongue, and snipped away at her unbleached calico.

"And then, again, about old Hoggs' cottage," pursued Mr. Daintree. "What on earth could make him forget where it was? He might as well forget the way to his own house. I really do think he must be a little gone in the upper storey, poor fellow! Marion, what have you to say about it?"

"I have to say that if you stand chattering here all the morning, we shall never get anything done. I want to speak to you immediately, Eustace, in the other room."

She hurried her husband out into the study, and carefully closed the door upon them.

What then was the Rev. Eustace's amazement to behold his wife suddenly execute a series of capers round the room, which would not have disgraced a coryphée at a Christmas pantomime, but were hardly in keeping with the demure and highly respectable bearing of the wife of the vicar of Sutton-in-the-Wold!

Mr. Daintree began to think that everybody was going mad this morning.

"My dear Marion, what on earth is the matter?"

"Oh, you dear, stupid, blunder-headed old donkey!" exclaimed his wife, finishing her pas seul in front of him, and hugging him vehemently as a finale to the entertainment. "Do you mean to say that you don't see it?"

"See it? See what?" repeated the unfortunate clergyman, in mortal bewilderment, staring at her hard.

"Oh, you dear, stupid old goose! why, it's as plain as daylight. Can't you guess?"

Eustace shook his head dolefully.

"Why, Sir John Kynaston has fallen in love with Vera!"

"Marion! impossible!" in an awe-struck whisper. "What can make you imagine such a thing?"

"Why, everything—the chancel, of course. She must have spoken to him about it; it is to be done for her; did you not see him look at her? And then, asking her to go down the village with him; he knows where Hoggs' cottage is as well as you do, only he couldn't think of anything better."

Eustace literally gasped with the magnitude of the revelation.

"Great Heavens! and I offered to go with him instead of her."

"Yes, you great blundering baby!"

"Oh, my dear, are you sure—are you quite sure? Remember his position and Vera's."

"Well, and isn't Vera good enough, and beautiful enough, for any position?" answered her sister, proudly.

"Yes, yes; that is true; God bless her!" he said, fervently. "Marion, what a clever woman you are to find it out."

"Of course I am clever, sir. But, Eustace, it is only beginning, you know; so we must just let things take their course, and not seem to notice anything. And, mind, not a word to your mother."

Meanwhile Vera and Sir John Kynaston were walking down the village street together. The man awkward and ill at ease, the woman calm and composed, and thoroughly mistress of the occasion.

"It is very good of you about the chancel," said Vera, softly, breaking the embarrassment of the silence between them.

"You knew I should do it," he said, looking at her.

She smiled. "I thought perhaps you would."

"You know why I am going to do it—for whose sake, do you not?" he pursued, still keeping his eyes upon her downcast face.

"Because it is the right thing to do, I hope; and for the sake of doing good," she answered, sedately; and Sir John felt immediately reproved and rebuked, as though by the voice of an angelic being.

"Tell me," he said, presently, "is it true that they want you to marry—that parson—Gisburne, of Tripton? Forgive me for asking."

Vera coloured a little and laughed.

"What dreadful things little boys are!" was all she said.

"Nay, but I want to know. Are you—are you engaged to him?" with a sudden painful eagerness of manner.

"Most decidedly I am not," she answered, earnestly.

Sir John breathed again.

"I don't know what you will think of me; you will, perhaps, say I am very impertinent. I know I have no right to question you."

"I only think you are very kind to take an interest in me," she answered, gently, looking at him with that wonderful look in her shadowy eyes that came into them unconsciously when she felt her softest and her best.

They had passed through the village by this time into the quiet lane beyond; needless to say that no thought of Hoggs, the clerk, or his cottage, had come into either of their heads by the way.

Sir John stopped short, and Vera of necessity stopped too.

"I thought—it seemed to me by what I overheard," he said, hesitatingly, "that they were tormenting you—persecuting you, perhaps—into a marriage you do not wish for."

"They have wished me to marry Mr. Gisburne," Vera admitted, in a low voice, rustling the fallen brown leaves with her foot, her eyes fixed on the ground.

"But you won't let them over-persuade you; you won't be induced to listen to them, will you? Promise me you won't?" he asked, anxiously.

Vera looked up frankly into his face and smiled.

"I give you my word of honour I will not marry Mr. Gisburne," she answered; and then she added, laughingly, "You had no business to make me betray that poor man's secrets."

And then Sir John laughed too, and, changing the subject, asked her if she would like to ride a little bay mare he had that he thought would carry her. Vera said she would think of it, with the air of a young queen accepting a favour from a humble subject; and Sir John thanked her as heartily as though she had promised him some great thing.

"Now, suppose we go and find Hoggs' cottage," she said, smiling. And they turned back towards the village.