n the wedding dress
here, all finished and ready to put on, and ten thousand a year waiting
for me! Oh, no, I am not going to be such an utter fool!"

She laughed; but her laughter was almost more sad than her tears, and her
sister left her, saddened and puzzled by her manner.

It was now nearly two months since the ball at Shadonake; and, soon after
that eventful visit, Vera had begun to be employed in preparing for her
wedding-day, which had been fixed for the 27th of February; for Sir John
had taken Mrs. Romer's hint, and had pressed an early marriage upon her.
Vera had made no objection; what objection, indeed, could she have found
to make? She had acquiesced readily in her lover's suggestions, and had
set to work to prepare herself for her marriage.

All this time Captain Kynaston had not been in Meadowshire at all; he had
declined his brother's hospitality, and had gone to spend his leave
amongst other friends in Somersetshire, where he had started a couple of
hunters, and wrote word to Sir John that the sport was of such a very
superior nature that he was unable to tear himself away.

Within a fortnight, however, of Sir John's wedding, Maurice did yield at
last to his brother's pressing request, and came up from Somersetshire to
Kynaston. Last Sunday he had suddenly appeared in the Kynaston pew in
Sutton Church by Sir John's side, and had shaken hands with Vera and her
relations on coming out of church, and had walked across the vicarage
garden by the side of Mrs. Daintree, Vera having gone on in front with
Tommy and Minnie. And it was from that moment that Vera had as suddenly
discovered that she was utterly and thoroughly wretched, and that she
dreaded her wedding-day with a strange and unaccountable terror.

She told herself that she was out of health, that the excitement and
bustle of the necessary preparations had over-tried her, that her nerves
were upset, her spirits depressed by reason of the solemnity a woman
naturally feels at the approach of so important a change in her life.
She assured herself aloud, day after day, that she was perfectly happy
and content, that she was the very luckiest and most fortunate of women,
and that she would sooner be Sir John's wife than the wife of any one
else in the world. And she told it to herself so often and so
emphatically, that there were whole hours, and even whole days together,
when she believed in these self-assurances implicitly and thoroughly.

All this