“You have not asked after the bride and bridegroom,” says old Mrs. Daintree, as she sits in her corner, darning everlastingly at those brown worsted socks of her son’s.  Vera thinks she must have been sitting there darning incessantly, day and night, ever since she had been away.  “We are all full of it down here.  Such a pretty welcome home they had—­arches across the road, and processions with flags, and a band inside the lodge-gates.  You should have been here to have seen it.  Everybody is making much of Mrs. Kynaston; she is a very pretty woman, I must say, and called here three days ago in the most beautiful Paris gown.”

“She seemed very sorry not to see you,” says Marion, “and quite disposed to be friendly.  I do hope you and she will get on, Vera, in spite of the awkwardness of her being in your place, as it were.”

“What do you mean?” rather sharply.

“Only, of course, dear, that it will be rather painful to you just at first to see anybody else the mistress at Kynaston, where you yourself might have been——­”

“If you had not been a fool,” interpolated the old lady, bluntly.

“I don’t think I shall mind that much,” says Vera, quietly.  “Where is Eustace?”

“Oh, he will be in presently; he has gone up to the Hall about the chancel.  The men have made all kinds of mistakes about the tesselated pavement; the wrong pattern was sent down from town, and we have had so much trouble about it, and there has been nobody to appeal to to set things right.  Captain Kynaston is all very well, and now he is back, I hope we may get things into a little order; but I am sorry to say he takes very little interest in the church or the parish; he is not half so good a squire as poor dear Sir John.”  And there was a whole volume of unspoken reproach in the sigh with which Marion wound up her remarks.

“Decidedly,” said Vera, to herself, as she went slowly upstairs to her own little room; “decidedly I must get away from all this.  I shall have to marry.”  She leant out of her open window in a frame-work of roses and jessamine, and looked out over the lime-trees towards the Hall.  Now that the trees were in full leaf, she could catch no glimpse of its red-stacked chimneys and its terraced gardens; but, by-and-by, when the leaves were down and the trees were bare, she knew she should see it.  Every morning when she got up the sun would be shining full upon it; every night when she went to bed she would see the twinkling lights of the many windows gleaming through the darkness; she would be in her room alone, and he would be out there, happy with his wife.

“I shall not be able to bear it,” said Vera, slowly, speaking aloud to herself.  “I had better marry, and go away; there is nothing else to be done.  Poor Denis!  He is worthy of a better woman; but I think he will be good to me.”

For it had come to this now, that when Vera thought about marrying, it was upon Denis Wilde that she also pondered.