Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/140

 132 go—that’s settled. And now, to try and get Sibylla. She’ll accompany me fast enough—at least, I fancy she would—but there’s that old West. I may have a battle over it with him.”

He flung away what remained in his hand of the sticks, leaped off the gate, and bent his steps hastily in the direction of Deerham. Could he be going, there and then, to Dr. West’s, to try his fate with Sibylla? Very probably. Frederick Massingbird liked to deliberate well when making up his mind to a step; but, that once done, he was wont to lose no time in carrying it out.

On this same afternoon, and just about the same hour, Lionel Verner was strolling through Deerham on his way to pay a visit to his mother. Close at the door he encountered Decima—well now—and Miss Tempest, who were going out. None would have believed Lionel and Decima to be brother and sister, judging by their attire—he wore deep mourning, she had not a shred of mourning about her. Lady Verner, in her prejudice against Verner’s Pride, had neither put on mourning herself for John Massingbird, nor allowed Decima to put it on. Lionel was turning with them; but Lady Verner, who had seen him from the window, sent a servant to desire him to come to her.

“Is it anything particular, mother?” he hastily inquired. “I am going with Decima and Lucy.”

“It is so far particular, Lionel, that I wish you to stay with me, instead of going with them,” answered Lady Verner. “I fancy you are getting rather fond of being with Lucy, and—and—in short, it won’t do.”

Lionel, in his excessive astonishment, could only stare at his mother.

“Whatever do you mean?” he asked. “Lucy Tempest! What won’t do?”

“You are beginning to pay Lucy Tempest particular attention,” said Lady Verner, unscrewing the silver stopper of her essence-bottle, and applying some to her forehead. “I will not permit it, Lionel.”

Lionel could not avoid laughing.

“What can have put such a thing in your head, mother, I am at a loss to conceive. Certainly nothing in my conduct has induced it. I have talked to Lucy as a child, more than as anything else; I have scarcely thought of her but as one—”

“Lucy is not a child,” interrupted Lady Verner.

“In years I find she is not. When I first saw her at the railway-station, I thought she was a child, and the impression somehow remains upon my mind. Too often I talk to her as one. As to anything else—were I to marry to-morrow, it is not Lucy Tempest I should make my wife.”

The first glad look that Lionel had seen on Lady Verner’s face for many a day came over it then. In her own mind she had been weaving a pretty little romance for Lionel: and it was her dread, lest that romance should be interfered with, which had called up her fears, touching Lucy Tempest.

“My darling Lionel, you know where you might go and choose a wife,” she said. “I have long wished that you would do it. Beauty, rank, wealth,—you may win them for the asking.”

A slightly self-conscious smile crossed the lips of Lionel.

“You are surely not going to introduce again that nonsense about Mary Elmsley!” he exclaimed. “I should never like her, never marry her, therefore—”

“Did you not allude to her when you spoke but now—that it was not Lucy Tempest you should make your wife?”

“No.”

“To whom, then? Lionel, I must know it.”

Lionel’s cheek flushed scarlet.

“I am not going to marry yet—I have no intention of it. Why should this conversation have arisen?”

“Oh, Lionel, there is a dreadful fear upon me!” gasped Lady Verner. “Not Lady Mary! Some one else! I remember Decima said one day that you appeared to care more for Sibylla West than for her, your sister. I have never thought of it from that hour to this: I paid no more attention to it than though she had said you cared for my maid Thérèse. You cannot care for Sibylla West!”

Lionel had high notions of duty as well as of honour, and he would not equivocate to his mother.

“I do care very much for Sibylla West,” he said, in a low tone; “and, please God, I hope she will sometime be my wife. But, mother, this confidence is entirely between ourselves. I beg you not to speak of it: it must not be suffered to get abroad.”

The one short sentence of avowal over, Lionel might as well have talked to the moon. Lady Verner heard him not. She was horrified. The Wests in her eyes were utterly despicable. Dr. West was tolerated as her doctor; but as nothing else. Her brave Lionel—standing there before her in all the pride of his strength and his beauty—he sacrifice himself to Sibylla West! Of the two, Thérèse would have been the less dreadful to the mind of Lady Verner.

A quarrel ensued. Stay—that’s a wrong word. It was not a quarrel, for Lady Verner had all the talking, and Lionel would not respond angrily; he kept his lips pressed together lest he should. Never had Lady Verner been moved to make such a scene: she reproached, she sobbed, she entreated. And, in the midst of it, in walked Decima and Lucy Tempest.

Lady Verner for once forgot herself. She forgot that Lucy was a stranger; she forgot the request of Lionel for silence; and, upon Decima’s asking what was amiss, she told all—that Lionel loved Sibylla West, and meant to marry her.

Decima was too shocked to speak. Lucy turned and looked at Lionel, a pleasant smile shining in her eyes. “She is very pretty; very, very pretty; I never saw any one prettier.”

“Thank you, Lucy,” he cordially said: and it was the first time he had called her Lucy.

Decima went up to her brother. “Lionel, must it be? I do not like her.”

“Decima, I fear that you and my mother are both prejudiced,” he somewhat haughtily answered.