sudden burst of passion, "I can know
no safety. Never to see his face again can be my only safeguard, and with
you I could never be safe. Why, even to bear your name would be to scorch
my heart every time I was addressed by it. Forgive me, John," turning to
him with a sudden penitence, "I should not have pained you by saying
these things; you who have been so infinitely good to me. Go your way
across the world, and forget me. Ah! have I not been a curse to every one
who bears the name of Kynaston?"

He was silent from very pity. Vera was no longer to him the goddess of
his imagination; the one pure and peerless woman, above all other women,
such as he had once fancied her to be. But surely she was dearer to him
now, in all her weakness and her suffering, than she had ever been on
that lofty pedestal of perfection upon which he had once lifted her.

He pitied her so much, and yet he could not help her; her malady was past
remedy. And, as she had told him, it was no one's fault--it was only a
miserable mistake. He had never had her heart--he saw it plainly now.
Many little things in the past, which he had scarcely remembered at the
time, came back to his memory--little details of that week at Shadonake,
when Maurice had lived in the same house with her, whilst he had only
gone over daily to see her. Always, in those days, Maurice had been by
her side, and Vera had been dreamily happy, with that fixed look of
content with which the presence of the man she loves best beautifies and
poetises a woman's face. Sir John was not a very observant man; but now,
after it was all over, these things came back to him. The night of the
ball, Mrs. Romer's mysterious hints, and his own vague disquietude at her
words; later on Maurice's reasonless refusal to be present at his
wedding, and Vera's startled face of dismay when he had asked her to go
and plead with him to stay for it.

They had struggled against their hearts, it was clear, these poor lovers,
whose lives were both tied up and bound before ever they had met each
other. But nature had been too strong for them; and the woman, at least,
had torn herself free from the chains that had become insupportable to
her.

They walked on silently, side by side, round the square. Some girls were
playing at lawn-tennis within the garden. There was an occasional shout
or a ringing laugh from their fresh young voices. A footman was walking
along the pavement opposite, with two fat pugs and a w