an who loved her, and whose
heart she had half broken, and she had lost a great many very excellent
and satisfactory things.

And Maurice was no nearer to her. With his own lips he had told her
that he could not marry her. There had been mention, indeed, of that
problematical term of five years, in which he had bound himself to await
Mrs. Romer's pleasure--but, even had Mrs. Romer not existed, it was plain
that Maurice was the last man in the world to take advantage of a woman's
weakness in order to supplant his brother in her heart.

Instinctively Vera felt that Maurice must be no less miserable than
herself; that his regret for what had happened between them must be as
great as her own, and his remorse far greater. They were, indeed, neither
of them blameless in the matter; for, if it was Maurice who had first
spoken of his love to his brother's promised wife, it was Vera who had
made that irrevocable step along the road of her destiny from which no
going back was now possible.

It was a time of utter misery to her. If she sat indoors there was
the persecution of Mrs. Daintree's ill-natured remarks, and Marion's
depression of spirits and half-uttered regrets; and there was also the
scaffolding rising round the chancel walls to be seen from the windows,
and the sound of the sawing of the masonry in the churchyard, as a
perpetual, reproachful reminder of the friend whose kindness and
affection she had so ill requited. If she went out, she could not go up
the lane without passing the gates of Kynaston, or towards the village
without catching sight of the venerable old house among its terraced
gardens, which, so lately, she had thought would be her home. Sometimes
she met her old friend, Mrs. Eccles, in her wanderings, but she did not
venture to speak to her; the cold disapproval in the housekeeper's
passing salutation made her shrink, like a guilty creature, in her
presence; and she would hurry by with scarcely an answering sign, with
downcast eyes and heightened colour.

Somehow, it came to pass in these days that Vera drifted into a degree
of intimacy with Beatrice Miller that would, possibly, never have come
about had the circumstances of her life been different. Ever since her
accidental meeting with the lovers outside Tripton station Vera had,
perforce, become a confidant of their hopes and fears; and Beatrice was
glad enough to have found a friend to whom she could talk about her
lover, for where is the woman w