Almost in despair he moved to the door, and just as he reached it, when his hand was already on the handle, she looked up. Her eyes, all softened with pleasure and gratitude, nay, almost with tenderness, met his. He stopped suddenly short.
"Miss Nevill, might I ask you to walk with me as far as the clerk's cottage? I—I forget which it is!"
It was the lamest and most blundering excuse. Any six-year-old child in the village could have pointed out the cottage to him. Mrs. Daintree looked up in astonishment. Vera blushed rosy red; Eustace, man-like, saw nothing, and began eagerly,
"I am walking that way myself; we can go together——" Suddenly his coat tails were violently pulled from behind. "Quite impossible, Eustace; I want you at home for the next hour," says Marion, quietly standing by his side, with a look of utter innocence upon her face. The vicar, almost throttled by the violence of the assault upon his garments, perceived that, in some mysterious manner, he had said something he ought not to have said. He deemed it wisest to subside into silence.
Vera rose from the writing-table. "I will go and put my hat on," she said, quietly, and left the room.
Three minutes later she and Sir John went out of the front door together.
"Well, that is the oddest fellow I ever came across in my life," said Eustace, fairly puzzled as soon as he was gone. "It is my belief," tapping his forehead significantly, "that he is a little touched here. I don't believe he quite knows what he is talking about. Why, the other night he would have nothing to say to the chancel, wouldn't even listen to me, cut me so short about it I really couldn't venture to pursue the subject; and here he comes, ten days later, all of his own accord, and proposes to do it exactly as it ought to be done, in the best and most expensive way—purbeck columns round the lancet windows, and all, Marion, just what I wanted; gives me absolute carte blanche about it. I only hope he won't take a fresh fancy into his head and change his mind again."
"Perhaps he found he would make himself unpopular if he did not do it," suggested his mother.
Marion held her tongue, and snipped away at her unbleached calico.
"And then, again, about old Hoggs' cottage," pursued Mr. Daintree. "What on earth could make him forget where it was? He might as well forget the way to his own house. I really do think he must be a little gone in the upper storey, poor fellow! Marion, what have you to say about it?"