been a terror to her;
his words of hopeless love had given her a shock that had been almost
physical; and his few passionate kisses had burnt into her very soul till
they had seemed to have been printed upon her lips in fire. Vera's love
had brought her no good thing that she could count. But it had done one
thing for her: if it had cursed her life, it had purified her soul.

The Vera who had come back to Sutton Vicarage in August was no longer the
same woman who had stood months ago on the terrace at Kynaston among the
falling autumn leaves, and who had told herself that it was money
alone that was worth living for.

She came back to everything that was full of pain, and to much in which
there was absolute fear.

Five minutes after she had entered the vicarage drawing-room her tortures
began.

"You have not asked after the bride and bridegroom," says old Mrs.
Daintree, as she sits in her corner, darning everlastingly at those brown
worsted socks of her son's. Vera thinks she must have been sitting there
darning incessantly, day and night, ever since she had been away. "We are
all full of it down here. Such a pretty welcome home they had--arches
across the road, and processions with flags, and a band inside the
lodge-gates. You should have been here to have seen it. Everybody is
making much of Mrs. Kynaston; she is a very pretty woman, I must say,
and called here three days ago in the most beautiful Paris gown."

"She seemed very sorry not to see you," says Marion, "and quite disposed
to be friendly. I do hope you and she will get on, Vera, in spite of the
awkwardness of her being in your place, as it were."

"What do you mean?" rather sharply.

"Only, of course, dear, that it will be rather painful to you just at
first to see anybody else the mistress at Kynaston, where you yourself
might have been----"

"If you had not been a fool," interpolated the old lady, bluntly.

"I don't think I shall mind that much," says Vera, quietly. "Where is
Eustace?"

"Oh, he will be in presently; he has gone up to the Hall about the
chancel. The men have made all kinds of mistakes about the tesselated
pavement; the wrong pattern was sent down from town, and we have had so
much trouble about it, and there has been nobody to appeal to to set
things right. Captain Kynaston is all very well, and now he is back, I
hope we may get things into a little order; but I am sorry to say he
takes very little interest in the church or the