Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/110

 102 I fell upon my foot. It is only a sprain: but I can’t walk.”

“How do you know it is only a sprain, Decima? I shall send West to you.”

“Thank you all the same, Lionel, but if you please I don’t like Doctor West well enough to have him,” was Miss Verner’s answer. “See! I don’t think I can walk.”

She took her foot out of the basin, and attempted to try. But for Lionel, she would have fallen: and her naturally pale face became paler from the pain.

“And you say you will not have Dr. West!” he cried, gently putting her into the chair again. “You must allow me to judge for you, Decima.”

“Then, Lionel, I’ll have Jan—if I must have any one. I have more faith in him,” she added, lifting her large blue eyes, “than in Dr. West.”

“Let it be Jan, then, Decima. Send one of the servants for him at once. What is to be done about Miss Tempest?”

“You must go alone. Unless you can persuade mamma out. Lionel, you will tell mamma about this. She must be told.”

As Lionel crossed the hall on his return, the door was being opened: the Verner’s Pride carriage had just driven up. Lady Verner had seen it from the window of the ante-room, and her eyes spoke her displeasure.

“Lionel, what brings that here?”

“I told them to bring it for Decima. I thought you would prefer that Miss Tempest should be met with that, than with a hired one.”

“Miss Tempest will know soon enough that I am too poor to keep a carriage,” said Lady Verner. “Decima may use it if she pleases. I would not.”

“My dear mother, Decima will not be able to use it. She cannot go to the station. She has hurt her foot.”

“How did she do that?”

“She was on a chair in the store-room, looking in the cupboard. She—”

“Of course! that’s just like Decima!” crossly responded Lady Verner. “She is at something or other everlastingly: doing half the work of a servant about the house.”

Lionel made no reply. He knew that, but for Decima, the house would be less comfortable, than it was, for Lady Verner: and that, what Decima did, she did in love.

“Will you go to the station?” he inquired.

“I! In this cold wind! How can you ask me, Lionel? I should get my face chapped irretrievably. If Decima cannot go, you must go alone.”

“But how shall I know Miss Tempest?”

“You must find her out,” said Lady Verner. “Her mother was as tall as a giantess: perhaps she is the same. Is Decima much hurt?”

“She thinks it is only a sprain. We have sent for Jan.”

“For Jan! Much good he will do!” returned Lady Verner: in so contemptuous a tone as to prove she had no very exalted opinion of Mr. “Jan’s” abilities.

Lionel went out to the carriage, and stepped in. The footman did not shut the door. “And Miss Verner, sir?”

“Miss Verner is not coming. The railway station. Tell Wigham to drive fast, or I shall be late.”

“My lady wouldn’t let Miss Decima come out in it,” thought Wigham to himself, as he drove on.

words of my lady, “as tall as a giantess,” unconsciously influenced the imagination of Lionel Verner. The train was steaming into the station at one end, as his carriage stopped at the other. Lionel leaped from it, and mixed amidst the bustle of the platform.

Not very much bustle either. And it would have been less, but that Deerham Station was the nearest approach, as yet, by rail to Heartburg, a town of some note about four miles distant. Not a single tall lady got out of the train. Not a lady at all, that Lionel could see. There were two fat women, tearing about after their luggage, both habited in men’s drab great coats, or what looked like them; and there was one very young lady, who stood back in apparent perplexity, gazing at the scene of confusion around her.

“She cannot be Miss Tempest,” deliberated Lionel. “If she is, my mother must have mistaken her age: she looks but a child. No harm in asking her, at any rate.”

He went up to the young lady. A very pleasant-looking girl, fair, with a peach bloom upon her cheeks, dark brown hair, and eyes soft and brown and luminous. Those eyes were wandering to all parts of the platform, some anxiety in their expression.

Lionel raised his hat.

“I beg your pardon. Have I the honour of addressing Miss Tempest?”

“Oh, yes, that is my name,” she answered, looking up at him, the peach bloom deepening to a glow of satisfaction, and the soft eyes lighting with a glad smile. “Have you come to meet me?”

“I have. I come from my mother, Lady Verner.”

“I am so glad,” she rejoined, with a frank sincerity of manner perfectly refreshing in these modern days of artificial young ladyism. “I was beginning to think nobody had come: and then what could I have done?”

“My sister would have come with me to receive you, but for an accident which occurred to her just before it was time to start. Have you any luggage?”

“There’s the great box I brought from India, and a hair-trunk, and my school-box. It is all in the van.”

“Allow me to take you out of this crowd, and it shall be seen to,” said Lionel, bending to offer his arm.

She took it, and turned with him. But stopped ere more than a step or two had been taken.

“We are going wrong. The luggage is up that way.”

“I am taking you to the carriage. The luggage will be all right.”

He was placing her in it when she suddenly drew back, and surveyed it.