ed to be a kind brother to him, and, if he cannot do
this small thing to please me, I shall consider him most ungrateful."

"That I am sure he is not," she answered, earnestly; "little as I know
him, I can assure you that he never loses an occasion of saying how much
he feels your goodness and generosity to him."

"Then he must prove it. Look here, Vera, will you go up to the Hall now
and talk to him? He is not hunting to-day; you will find him in the
library."

"I?" she cried, looking half frightened; "what can I do? You had much
better ask him yourself."

"I have asked him over and over again, till I am sick of asking! If you
were to put it as a personal request from yourself, I am sure he would
see how important to us both it is that he should be present at our
wedding."

"Pray don't ask me to do such a thing; I really cannot," she said,
hastily.

Sir John looked at her in some surprise; there was an amount of distress
in her face that struck him as inadequate to the small thing he had asked
of her.

"Why, Vera! have you grown shy? Surely you will not mind doing so small a
thing to please me? You need not stay long, and you have your hat on all
ready. I have to speak to your brother-in-law about the chancel; I have a
letter from the architect this morning; and everything must be settled
about it before we go. If you will go up and speak to Maurice now, I will
join you--say in twenty minutes from now," consulting his watch, "at the
lodge gates. You will go, won't you, dear, just to please me?"

She did not know how to refuse; she had no excuse to give, no reason that
she could put into words why she should shrink with such a dreadful
terror from this interview with his brother which he was forcing upon
her. She told him that she would go, and Sir John, leaving her, went into
the house well satisfied to do his business with the vicar.

And Vera went slowly up the lane alone towards the Hall. She did not know
what she was going to say to Maurice; she hardly knew, indeed, what it
was she had been commissioned to ask of him; nor in what words her
request was to be made. She thought no longer of her wedding-day, nor of
the lover who had just parted with her. Only before her eyes there came
again the little wintry copse of birch-trees; the horses standing by, the
bare fields stretching around, and back into her heart there flashed the
memory of those quick, hot kisses pressed upon her outstretched hand; the
one s