"Marion! impossible!" in an awe-struck whisper. "What can make you imagine such a thing?"
"Why, everything—the chancel, of course. She must have spoken to him about it; it is to be done for her; did you not see him look at her? And then, asking her to go down the village with him; he knows where Hoggs' cottage is as well as you do, only he couldn't think of anything better."
Eustace literally gasped with the magnitude of the revelation.
"Great Heavens! and I offered to go with him instead of her."
"Yes, you great blundering baby!"
"Oh, my dear, are you sure—are you quite sure? Remember his position and Vera's."
"Well, and isn't Vera good enough, and beautiful enough, for any position?" answered her sister, proudly.
"Yes, yes; that is true; God bless her!" he said, fervently. "Marion, what a clever woman you are to find it out."
"Of course I am clever, sir. But, Eustace, it is only beginning, you know; so we must just let things take their course, and not seem to notice anything. And, mind, not a word to your mother."
Meanwhile Vera and Sir John Kynaston were walking down the village street together. The man awkward and ill at ease, the woman calm and composed, and thoroughly mistress of the occasion.