Lodge.

He had left England, she knew. Helen privately hoped he had left this
earth. Any way, he had not troubled her, and she had forgotten him.

CHAPTER XIX.

WHAT SHE WAITED FOR.

Go, forget me; why should sorrow
O'er that brow a shadow fling?
Go, forget me, and to-morrow
Brightly smile and sweetly sing.
Smile--though I shall not be near thee;
Sing--though I shall never hear thee.

Chas. Wolfe.

All this time what of Vera? Would any one of them at the vicarage ever
forget that morning when she had come in after her walk with Sir John
Kynaston, and had stood before them all and, pale as a ghost, had said to
them,

"I am not going to be married; I have broken it off."

It had been a great blow to them, but neither the prayers of her weeping
sister, nor the angry indignation of old Mrs. Daintree, nor even the
gentle remonstrances of her brother-in-law could serve to alter her
determination, nor would she enter into any explanation concerning her
conduct.

It was not pleasant, of course, to be reviled and scolded, to be
questioned and marvelled at, to be treated like a naughty child in
disgrace; and then, whenever she went out, to feel herself tabooed by her
acquaintances as a young woman who had behaved very disgracefully; or
else to be stared at as a natural curiosity by persons whom she hardly
knew.

But she lived through all this bravely. There was a certain amount of
unnatural excitement which kept up her courage and enabled her to face
it. It was no more than what she had expected. The glow of her love and
her impulse of self-sacrifice were still upon her; her nerves had been
strung to the uttermost, and she felt strong in the knowledge of the
justice and the right of her own conduct.

But by-and-by all this died away. Sir John left the neighbourhood;
people got tired of talking about her broken-off marriage; there was no
longer any occasion for her to be brave and steadfast. Life began to
resume for her its normal aspect, the aspect which it had worn in the old
days before Sir John had ever come down to Kynaston, or ever found her
day-dreaming in the churchyard upon Farmer Crupps' family sarcophagus.
The tongue of the sour-tempered old lady, snapping and snarling at her
with more than the bitterness of old, and the suppressed sighs and
mournful demeanour of her sister, whose sympathy and companionship she
had now completely forfeited, and who went about the house with a