r were they quite so coarse and unlovely as
would have been those of a purely mercenary woman. She was free from the
vulgarity of desiring the man's money and his name from any desire to
raise herself above her relations, or to feed her own vanity and ambition
at their expense. It was only that, marriage being a necessity for her,
to marry anything but a rich man would have been, with her tastes and the
habits to which she had been brought up, the sheerest and rankest folly.
She thought she could make a good wife to any man whose life she would
like to share--that is to say, a life of ease and affluence. She knew she
would make a very bad wife to a poor man. Therefore she determined upon
so carving out her own fortunes that she should not make a failure of
herself. It was worldly wisdom of the purest and simplest character.

She was as much determined as ever upon winning Kynaston's owner if he
was to be won. Only she wished, with a little sigh, that he had happened
to be the man in the photograph. She hardly knew why she wished it--but
the wish was there.

She sat bending over her fire, with all her soft, dark hair loose about
her face and flowing down her back, and her eyes fixed dreamily upon the
flames. Her past life came back to her, her old life in the whirl and
turmoil of pleasure which had suited her so well. She compared it, a
little drearily, with the present; with the humdrum routine of the
vicarage; with the parish talk about the old women and the schools; and
the small tittle-tattle about the schoolmaster and the choir, going on
around her all day; with old Mrs. Daintree's sharp tongue and her
sister's meek rejoinders. She was very tired of it. It did not amuse her.
She was not exactly discontented with her lot. Eustace and her sister
were very kind to her, and she loved them dearly; but she did not live
their life--she was with them, but not of them. As for herself, for her
interests and her delights, they stagnated amongst them all. How long was
it to last?

And Kynaston, by contrast, appeared very fair, with its smooth lawns and
its terrace walks, and its great desolate rooms, that she would so well
understand how to fill with life and brightness; but Kynaston's master
counted for very little to her. She knew the power of her own beauty so
well. Experience had taught her that Vera Nevill had but to smile and to
win; it had been so easy to her to be loved and wooed.

"Only," she said to herself, as she