would not have
known how to set about them, and assuredly she had no desire to try.

So she wandered about the garden in the summer time, or sat dreamily by
the fire in winter. She gathered flowers and decorated the rooms with
them; she spoilt the children, she quarrelled with their grandmother, but
she did nothing else; and the righteous soul of Eustace Daintree was
disquieted within him on account of her. He felt that her life was
wasted, and the responsibility of it seemed, to his over-sensitive
conscience, to rest upon himself.

"The girl ought to be married," he would say to his wife, anxiously. "A
husband and a home of her own is what she wants. If she were happily
settled she would find occupation enough."

"I don't see whom she could marry, Eustace; men are so scarce, and there
are so many girls in the county."

"Well, she might have had Barry." Barry was a curate whom Vera had lately
scorned, and who had, in consequence of the crushed condition of his
affections, incontinently fled. "And then there is Gisburne. Why couldn't
she marry Gisburne? He is quite a catch, and a good young man too."

"Yes, it is a pity; perhaps she may change her mind, and he will ask her
again after Christmas; he told me as much."

"You must try and persuade her to think better of it by then, my dear.
Now I must be off to old Abraham, and be sure you send round the port to
Mary Williams; and you will find the list for the blanket club on my
study table, love."

Her husband started on his morning rounds, and Marion, coming down into
the drawing-room, found old Mrs. Daintree haranguing Vera on the same
all-important topic.

"I am only speaking for your good, Vera; what other object could I have?"
she was saying, as she dived into the huge basket of undarned socks on
the floor before her, and extracted thereout a ragged specimen to be
operated upon. "It is sheer obstinacy on your part that you will not
accept such a good offer. And there was poor Mr. Barry, a most worthy
young man, and his second cousin a bishop, too, quite sure of a living,
I should say."

"Another clergyman!" said Vera, with a soft laugh, just lifting up her
hands and letting them fall down again upon her lap, with a little,
half-foreign movement of impatience. "Are there, then, no other men but
the clergy in this country?"

"And a very good thing if there were no others," glared the old lady,
defiantly, over her spectacles.

"I do not like them," said Ve