Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/111

19, 1862.] “What a pretty carriage!” she exclaimed.

Many said the same of the Verner Pride equipages. The colour of the panels was of that rich shade of blue called ultra-marine, with white linings and hammer-cloths, while a good deal of silver shone on the harness of the horses. The servants’ livery was white and silver, their small-clothes blue.

Lionel handed her in.

“Have we far to go?” she asked.

“Not five minutes’ drive.”

He closed the door, gave the footman directions about the luggage, took his own seat by the coachman, and the carriage started. Lady Verner came to the door of the court to receive Miss Tempest.

In the old Indian days of Lady Verner, she and Sir Lionel had been close and intimate friends of Colonel and Mrs. Tempest. Subsequently Mrs. Tempest had died, and their only daughter had been sent to a clergyman’s family in England for her education—a very superior place where six pupils only were taken. But she was of age to leave it now, and Colonel Tempest, who contemplated soon being home, had craved of Lady Verner to receive her in the interim.

“Lionel,” said his mother to him, “you must stop here for the rest of the day, and help to entertain her.”

“Why, what can I do towards it?” responded Lionel.

“You can do something. You can talk. They have got Decima into her room, and I must be up and down with her. I don’t like leaving Lucy alone the first day she is in the house—she will take a prejudice against it. One blessed thing, she seems quite simple, not exacting.”

“Anything but exacting, I should say,” replied Lionel. “I will stay for an hour or two, if you like, mother, but I must be home to-dinner.”

Lady Verner need not have troubled herself about “entertaining” Lucy Tempest. She was accustomed to entertain herself: and as to any ceremony or homage being paid to her, she would not have understood it, and might have felt embarrassed. She had not been used to anything of the sort. Could Lady Verner have seen her then, at the very moment she was talking to Lionel, her fears might have been relieved. Lucy Tempest had found her way to Decima’s room, and had taken up her position in a very undignified fashion at that young lady’s feet, her soft, candid brown eyes fixed upwards on Decima’s face, and her tongue busy with its reminiscences of India. After some time spent in this manner, she was scared away by the entrance of a gentleman whom Decima called “Jan.” Upon which she proceeded to the chamber she had been shown to as hers, to dress, a process which did not appear to be very elaborate by the time it took, and then she went down-stairs to find Lady Verner.

Lady Verner had not quitted Lionel. She had been grumbling and complaining all that time: it was half the pastime of Lady Verner’s life to grumble in the ears of Lionel and Decima. Bitterly mortified had Lady Verner been when she found, upon her arrival from India, that Stephen Verner, her late husband’s younger brother, had succeeded to Verner’s Pride, to the exclusion of herself and of Lionel; and bitterly mortified she remained. Whether it had been by some strange oversight on the part of old Mr. Verner, or whether it had been intentional, no provision whatever had been left by him to Lady Verner and to her children. Stephen Verner would have remedied this. On the arrival of Lady Verner, he had proposed to pay over to her yearly a certain sum out of the estate: but Lady Verner, smarting under disappointment, under the sense of injustice, had flung his proposal back to him. Never, so long as he lived, would she be obliged to him for the worth of a sixpence in money or in kind, she told Stephen Verner passionately: and she had kept her word.

Her income was sadly limited: it was very little besides her pay as a colonel’s widow: and to Lady Verner it seemed less than it really was, for her habits were somewhat expensive. She took this house, Deerham Court, which was then to be let without the land; had it embellished inside and out—which cost her more than she could afford—and had since resided in it. She would not have rented under Mr. Verner had he paid her to do it. She declined all intercourse with Verner’s Pride; had never put her foot over its threshold: Decima went once in a way; but she, never. If she and Stephen Verner met abroad, she was coldly civil to him: she was indifferently haughty to Mrs. Verner, whom she despised in her heart for not being a lady. With all her deficiencies, Lady Verner was essentially a gentlewoman: not to be one, amounted in her eyes to little less than a sin. No wonder that she, with her delicate beauty of person, her quiet refinements of dress, shrank within herself as she swept past poor Mrs. Verner, with her great person, her crimson face, and her flaunting colours! No wonder that Lady Verner, smarting under her wrongs, passed half her time giving utterance to them; or, that her smooth face was acquiring premature wrinkles of discontent. Lionel had a somewhat difficult course to steer, between Verner’s Pride and Deerham Court, so as to keep friends with both.

Lucy Tempest appeared at the door. She stood there hesitating, after the manner of a timid schoolgirl. They turned round and saw her.

“If you please, may I come in?”

Lady Verner could have sighed over the deficiency of “style,” or confidence: whichever you may like to term it. Lionel laughed, as he crossed the room to throw the door wider by way of welcome.

She wore a light, shot pink dress of peculiar material, a sort of cashmere, very fine and soft. Looking at it one way it was pink; the other, mauve: the general shade of it was beautiful. Lady Verner could have sighed again: if the wearer was deficient in style, certainly the dress was. A low body and short sleeves, perfectly simple, a narrow bit of white lace alone edging them: nothing on her neck, nothing on her arms, no gloves. A child of seven might have been so dressed. Lady Verner looked at her, her brow knit, and various thoughts running through her brain: she began to fear that Miss Tempest