“Listen, child,” he said, eagerly.  “If I were to go away for a year, and then come back to you, how would it be?  Oh, my darling!  I love you so deeply that I could even be content to do with but half your heart, so that I could win your sweet self.  I would exact nothing from you, love, no more than what you could give me freely.  But I would love you so well, and make your life so sweet and pleasant to you, that in time, perhaps, you would forget the old sorrow, and learn to be happy, with a quiet kind of happiness, with me; I would ask for no more.  Look, child, I have grieved sorely for you; I have sat down and wept, and mourned for you as though I had no strength or life left in me.  But now I am ashamed of my weakness, for it is unworthy of you.  I am going away abroad, across the world, I care not where, so long as I can be up and doing, and forget the pain at my heart.  Vera, tell me that I may come back to you in a year.  Think with what fresh life and courage I should go if I had but that hope before my eyes.  In a year’s time your pain will be less; you will have forgotten many things; you will be content, perhaps, to come to me, knowing that I will never reproach you with the past, nor expect more than you can give me in the future.  Vera, let me come back and claim you in a year!”

How strange it was that the chance of marrying this man was perpetually being presented to her.  Never, perhaps, had the temptation been stronger to her than it was now.  He had divined her secret; there would be no concealment between them; he would ask her for no love it was not in her power to give; he would be content with her as she was, and he would love her, and worship her, and surround her with everything that could make her life pleasant and easy for her.  Could a man offer more?  Oh! why could she not take him at his word, and give him the hope he craved for?

Alas! for Vera; she had eaten too deeply of the knowledge of good and evil—­that worldly wisdom in whose strength she had started in life’s race, and in the possession of which she had once deemed herself so strong—­so absolutely invulnerable to the things that pierce and wound weaker woman—­this was gone from her.  The baser part of her nature, wherewith she would so gladly have been content, was uppermost no longer; her heart had triumphed over her head, and, with a woman of strong character, this is generally only done at the expense of her happiness.

To marry Sir John Kynaston, to be lapped in luxury, to receive all the good things of this world at his hands, and all the while to love his brother with a guilty love, this was no longer possible to Vera Nevill.

“I cannot do it; do not ask me,” she said, distractedly.  “Your goodness to me half breaks my heart; but it cannot be.”

“Why not, child?  In a year so much may be altered.”

“I shall not alter.”

“No; but, even so, you might learn to be happy with me.”