Vera Nevill | Page 5

seems hard for you here; a home of your own
might be happier for you; and Gisburne is a good man."
"I don't like good men who are poor!" says Vera, with a little grimace.
Her brother-in-law looks shocked. "Why do you say such hard worldly
things, Vera? You do not really mean them."
"Don't I? Eustace, look at me: do I look like a poor clergyman's wife?
Do survey me dispassionately." She holds herself at arm's length from
him, and looks comically up and down the length of her gray skirts.
"Think of the yards and yards of stuff it takes to clothe me; and should
not a woman as tall as I am be always in velvet and point lace, Eustace?
What is the good of condemning myself to workhouse sheeting for the
rest of my days?"
Mr. Daintree looks at her admiringly; he has learnt to love her; this
beautiful southern flower that has come to blossom in his home.
Women will be hard enough on Vera through her life--men, never.
"You have great gifts and great temptations, my child," he says,
solemnly. "I pray that I may be enabled to do my duty to you. Do not
say you do not like good men, Vera, it pains me to hear you say it."
"I like one good man, and his name is Eustace Daintree!" she answers,
softly; "is not that a hopeful sign?"
"You are a little flatterer, Vera," he says, kissing her; but, though he is
a middle-aged clergyman and her brother-in-law, he is by no means
impervious to the flattery.
Meanwhile, upstairs, Marion is humbling herself into the dust, at the
footstool of her tyrant. Mrs. Daintree is very angry with Marion's sister,

and Mr. Gisburne is also the text whereon she hangs her sermon.
"I wish her no harm, Marion; why should I? She is most impertinent to
me, but of that I will not speak."
"Indeed, grandmamma, you do not understand Vera. I am sure she----"
"Oh, yes, excuse me, my dear, I understand her perfectly--the
impertinence to myself I waive--I hope I am a Christian, but I cannot
forgive her for turning up her nose at Mr. Gisburne--a most excellent
young man; what can a girl want more?"
"Dear Mrs. Daintree, does Vera look like a poor clergyman's wife?"
said Marion, using unconsciously Vera's own arguments.
"Now, Marion, I have no patience with such folly! Whom do you
suppose she is to wait for? We haven't got any Princes down at Sutton
to marry her; and I say it's a shame that she should go on living on her
friends, a girl without a penny! when she might marry a respectable
man, and have a home of her own."
And then even Marion said that, if Vera could be brought to like Mr.
Gisburne, it might possibly be happier for her to marry him.
CHAPTER II.
KYNASTON HALL.
Only the wind here hovers and revels In a round where life seems
barren as death. Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping,
Haply of lovers none ever will know.
Swinburne, "A Forsaken Garden."
It seemed to be generally acknowledged by the Daintree family that if
Vera would only consent to yield to the solicitations of the Reverend
Albert Gisburne, and transfer herself to Tripton Rectory for life, it
would be the simplest and easiest solution of a good many difficult

problems concerning her.
In point of fact, Vera Nevill was an incongruous element in the
Daintree household. In that quiet humdrum country clergyman's life she
was as much out of her proper place as a bird of paradise in a chicken
yard, or a Gloire de Dijon rose in a field of turnips.
It was not her beauty alone, but her whole previous life which unfitted
her for the things amongst which she found herself suddenly
transplanted. She was no young unformed child, but a woman of the
world, who had been courted and flattered and sought after; who had
learnt to hold her own, and to fight her battles single-handed, and who
knew far more about the dangers and difficulties of life than did the
simple-hearted brother-in-law, under whose charge she now found
herself, or the timid, gentle sister who was so many years her senior.
But if she was cognizant of the world and its ways, Vera knew
absolutely nothing about the life of an English vicarage. Sunday
schools and mothers' meetings were enigmas to her; clothing clubs and
friendly societies, hopeless and uninteresting mysteries which she had
no desire to solve. She had no place in the daily routine. What was she
to do amongst it all?
Vera did what was most pleasant and also most natural to her--she did
nothing. She was by habit and by culture essentially