The old lady had raised her voice; she spoke loud and angrily; she was rapidly working herself into a passion.  Tommy, accustomed to family rows, stood on the hearthrug, looking excitedly from his grandmother to his aunt.  He was a precocious child; he did not quite understand, and yet he understood partly.  He knew that his grandmother was scolding Vera, and telling her she was to go away and marry Mr. Gisburne.  That Vera should go away!  That, in itself, was sufficiently awful.  Tommy adored Vera with all the intensity of his childish soul; that she should go away from him to Mr. Gisburne seemed to him the most terrible visitation that could possibly happen.  His little heart swelled within him; the tears were very near his eyes.

At this very minute the door softly opened, and Sir John Kynaston, whose ring had been unheard in the commotion, was ushered in.

Tommy thought he saw a deliverer, specially sent in by Providence for the occasion.  He made one spring at him and caught him round the legs, after the manner of enthusiastic small boys.

“Please—­please—­don’t let grandmamma send aunt Vera away to Tripton to marry Mr. Gisburne!  He has red hair, and I hate him; and aunt Vera doesn’t want to go, she wants to stop at home and do something better!”

A moment of utter confusion on all sides; then Vera, crimson to the roots of her hair, stepped forward and held out her hand.

“Little pitchers have long ears!” she said, laughing:  “and Tommy is a very silly little boy.”

“No, but, aunt Vera, you said—­you said,” cried the child.  What further revelations he might have made were fortunately not destined to be known.  His aunt placed her hand unceremoniously over his small, eager mouth, and hustled both children in some haste out of the room.

Meanwhile, Sir John, looking the picture of distress and embarrassment, had shaken hands with the old lady, and inquired if he could speak with her son.

“Mr. Daintree is in his study; I will take you to him,” she said, rising, and led him away out of the room.  She looked at him sharply as she showed him into the study; and it did come across her mind, “I wonder what you come so often for.”  Still, no thought of Vera entered into her head.  Sir John was the great man of the place, the squire, the potentate in the hollow of whose hand lay Sutton-in-the-Wold and all its inhabitants, and Vera was a nobody in the old lady’s eyes,—­a waif, whose presence was of no account at all.  Sir John was no more likely to notice her than any of the village girls; except, indeed, that he would speak politely to her because she was Eustace’s sister-in-law.  Still, it did come across her mind to wonder what he came so often for.

Five minutes later the two gentlemen were seen going across the vicarage garden towards the church.

They remained there a very long time, more than half an hour.  When they came back Marion had finished her housekeeping and was in the room busy cutting out unbleached calico into poor men’s shirts, on the grand piano, an instrument which she maintained had been specially and originally called into existence for no other purpose.  Mrs. Daintree still sat in her chimney corner.  Vera was at the writing-table with her back to the room, writing a letter.