He came back to her and stood before her looking at her for a minute.  And then he made this most remarkable speech: 

“If you were to ask Sir John Kynaston this he would restore the chancel!” he said.

For half-a-second Vera stared at him in blank amazement.  Then she turned haughtily round, and flushed hotly with angry indignation.

“There is nothing more to see in the church,” she said, shortly, and walked straight out of it.

The stranger had followed her; when they reached the churchyard he said to her, quite humbly,

“I beg your pardon; Miss Nevill; how unlucky I am to have made you angry, to begin with.”

Vera looked at him in astonishment.  How did he know her name; who was he?  He was looking at her with such a penitent and distressed expression, that for the first time she noticed what a kind face it was.  Then, before she could answer him, she saw her brother-in-law over the paling of the vicarage garden, coming towards them.

The stranger saw him, too, and lifted his hat to her.

“Good-bye,” he said, rather hastily; “I did not mean to offend you; don’t be angry about it;” and, before she could say a word, he turned quickly down the churchyard through the lych-gate into the road, and was gone.

“Vera,” said Eustace Daintree, coming leisurely up to her through the garden gate, “how on earth do you come to be talking to Sir John; has he been saying anything to you about the chancel?”

“Who was it? who did you say?” cried Vera, aghast.

“Why, Sir John Kynaston, to be sure.  Did you not know it was he?”

She was thunderstruck.  “Are you quite sure?” she faltered.

“Why, of course!  I saw him only last night, you know.  I wonder why he went off in such a hurry when he saw me?”

Vera was walking silently down the garden towards the house by his side.  The thought in her mind was, “If that was Sir John Kynaston, who then is the photograph I found in the writing-table drawer?”

“What did he say to you, Vera?  How came you to be talking to him?” pursued her brother-in-law.

“I only let him into the church.  I did not know who he was.  I told him the chancel ought to be restored—­by himself.”

Eustace Daintree looked dismayed.

“How very unfortunate.  It will, perhaps, make him still more decided to do nothing.”

Vera smiled a little to herself.  “I hope not, Eustace,” was all she said.  But although she said no word of it to him, she knew at her heart that his chancel would be restored for him.

Late that night Vera sat alone by her fireside, and thought over her morning’s adventure; and once again she said to herself, with a little regretful sigh, “Whose, then, was the photograph?” But she put the thought away from her.

After all, she said to herself, it made no difference.  He was still Sir John Kynaston of Kynaston Hall, and just as well worth a woman’s while to marry.  She had made some mistake, that was all; and the real Sir John was not the least romantic or interesting to look at, but Kynaston Hall belonged to him all the same.