It was now nearly two months since the ball at Shadonake; and, soon after that eventful visit, Vera had begun to be employed in preparing for her wedding-day, which had been fixed for the 27th of February; for Sir John had taken Mrs. Romer’s hint, and had pressed an early marriage upon her.  Vera had made no objection; what objection, indeed, could she have found to make?  She had acquiesced readily in her lover’s suggestions, and had set to work to prepare herself for her marriage.

All this time Captain Kynaston had not been in Meadowshire at all; he had declined his brother’s hospitality, and had gone to spend his leave amongst other friends in Somersetshire, where he had started a couple of hunters, and wrote word to Sir John that the sport was of such a very superior nature that he was unable to tear himself away.

Within a fortnight, however, of Sir John’s wedding, Maurice did yield at last to his brother’s pressing request, and came up from Somersetshire to Kynaston.  Last Sunday he had suddenly appeared in the Kynaston pew in Sutton Church by Sir John’s side, and had shaken hands with Vera and her relations on coming out of church, and had walked across the vicarage garden by the side of Mrs. Daintree, Vera having gone on in front with Tommy and Minnie.  And it was from that moment that Vera had as suddenly discovered that she was utterly and thoroughly wretched, and that she dreaded her wedding-day with a strange and unaccountable terror.

She told herself that she was out of health, that the excitement and bustle of the necessary preparations had over-tried her, that her nerves were upset, her spirits depressed by reason of the solemnity a woman naturally feels at the approach of so important a change in her life.  She assured herself aloud, day after day, that she was perfectly happy and content, that she was the very luckiest and most fortunate of women, and that she would sooner be Sir John’s wife than the wife of any one else in the world.  And she told it to herself so often and so emphatically, that there were whole hours, and even whole days together, when she believed in these self-assurances implicitly and thoroughly.

All this time she saw next to nothing of Maurice Kynaston; the weather was mild and open, and he went out hunting every day.  Sir John, on the other hand, was much with her; a constant necessity for his presence seemed to possess her.  She was never thoroughly content but when he was with her; ever restless and ill at ease in his absence.

No one could be more thoroughly convinced than Vera of the entire wisdom of the marriage she was about to make.  It was, she felt persuaded, the best and the happiest thing she could have done with her life.  Wealth, position, affection, were all laid at her feet; and her husband, moreover, would be a man whose goodness and whose devotion to her could never fail to command her respect.  What more could a woman who, like herself, was fully alive to the importance of the good things of this world desire?  Surely nothing more.  Vera, when she was left alone with the glories of her wedding garment, took herself to task for her foolish words to her sister.