"No; but it is not only for the money, Eustace; indeed it is not. But—but—I should be miserable without it; and I must do something with my life."
He drew her near to him, and kissed her forehead. He understood her. With that rare gift of sympathy—the highest, the most God-like of all human attributes—he felt at once what she meant. It was wonderful that this man, who was so unworldly, so unselfish, so pure of the stains of earth himself, should have seen at once her position from her own point of view; that was neither a very exalted one, nor was it very free from the dross of worldliness. But it was so. All at once he seemed to know by a subtle instinct what were the weaknesses, and the temptations, and the aims of this girl, who, with all her faults, was so dear to him. He understood her better, perhaps, than she understood herself. Her soul was untouched by passion; the story of her life was unwritten; there was no danger for her yet; and perchance it might be that the storms of life would pass her by unscathed, and that she might remain sheltered for ever in the safe haven which had opened so unexpectedly to receive her.
"There is a peril in the course you have chosen," he said, gravely; "but your soul is pure, and you are safe. And I know, Vera, that you will always do your duty."
And the tears were in her eyes as he left her.
When he had gone she sat down to write her answer to Sir John Kynaston. She dipped her pen into the ink, and sat with it in her hand, thinking. Her brother-in-law's words had aroused a fresh train of thought within her. There seemed to be an amount of solemnity in what she was about to do that she had not considered before. It was true that she did not love him; but then, as she had told Eustace just now, she loved no one else; she did not rightly understand what love meant, indeed. And is a woman to wait on in patience for years until love comes to her? Would it ever come? Probably not, thought Vera; not to her, who thought herself to be cold, and not easily moved. There must be surely many women to whom this wonderful thing of love never comes. In all her experience of life there was nothing to contradict this. It was not as if she had been a girl who had never left her native village, never tasted of the pleasures of life, never known the sweet incense of flattery and devotion. Vera had known it all. Many men had courted her; one or two had loved her dearly, but she had not loved them. Amongst them all, indeed, there had been never one whom she had liked with such a sincere affection as she now felt for this man, who seemed to love her so much, and who wrote to her so diffidently, and yet so devotedly.
"I love him as well as I am ever likely to love any one," said Vera, to herself. Yet still she leant her chin upon her hand and looked out of the window at the gray bare branches of the elm-trees across the damp green lawn, and still her letter was unwritten.
"Vera!" cries Marion, coming in hurriedly and breaking in upon her reverie, "the footman from Kynaston is waiting all this time to know if there is any answer! Shall I send him away? Or have you made up your mind?"
"Oh yes, I have made up my mind. My note will be ready directly; he may as well take it. It will save the trouble of sending up to the Hall later." For Vera remembers that there is not a superfluity of servants at the vicarage, and that they all of them have plenty to do.
And thus, a mere trifle—a feather, as it were, on the river of life—settled her destiny for her out of hand.
She dipped her pen into the ink once more, and wrote:—