In a round where life seems barren as death.
Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping,
Haply of lovers none ever will know.

Swinburne, "A Forsaken Garden."


It seemed to be generally acknowledged by the Daintree family that if
Vera would only consent to yield to the solicitations of the Reverend
Albert Gisburne, and transfer herself to Tripton Rectory for life, it
would be the simplest and easiest solution of a good many difficult
problems concerning her.

In point of fact, Vera Nevill was an incongruous element in the Daintree
household. In that quiet humdrum country clergyman's life she was as much
out of her proper place as a bird of paradise in a chicken yard, or a
Gloire de Dijon rose in a field of turnips.

It was not her beauty alone, but her whole previous life which unfitted
her for the things amongst which she found herself suddenly transplanted.
She was no young unformed child, but a woman of the world, who had been
courted and flattered and sought after; who had learnt to hold her own,
and to fight her battles single-handed, and who knew far more about
the dangers and difficulties of life than did the simple-hearted
brother-in-law, under whose charge she now found herself, or the timid,
gentle sister who was so many years her senior.

But if she was cognizant of the world and its ways, Vera knew absolutely
nothing about the life of an English vicarage. Sunday schools and
mothers' meetings were enigmas to her; clothing clubs and friendly