Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/337

 . 13, 1862.] that I am left without anything. Oh, Lionel! don’t turn me out! Let me stay till I can see what is to be done for myself. I shall not hurt you. It would have been all mine had Frederick lived.”

He really did not know what to do. Every moment there seemed to grow less chance that she would leave the house. A bright thought darted into his mind. It was, that he would get his mother or Decima to come and stay with him for a time.”time. [sic]

“What would you like to take!” he inquired. “Mrs. Tynn will get you anything you wish. I”

“Nothing yet,” she interrupted. “I could not eat; I am too unhappy. I will take some tea presently, but not until I am warmer. I am very cold.”

She cowered over the fire again, shivering much. Lionel, saying he had a note to write, which was in a hurry, sat down to a distant table. He penned a few hasty lines to his mother, telling her that Mrs. Massingbird had come, under the impression that she was coming to Mrs. Verner, and that he could not well turn her out again that night, fatigued and poorly as she appeared to him to be. He begged his mother to come to him for a day or two, in the emergency; or to send Decima.

An under-current of conviction ran in Lionel’s mind, during the time of writing it, that his mother would not come: he doubted even whether she would allow Decima to come. He drove the thought away from him; but the impression remained. Carrying the note out of the room when written, he despatched it to Deerham Court by a mounted groom. As he was returning to the dining-room, he encountered Mrs. Tynn.

“I hear Mrs. Massingbird has arrived, sir,” cried she.

“Yes,” replied Lionel. “She will like some tea presently. She appears very much fatigued.”

“Is the luggage to be taken up stairs, sir?” she continued, pointing to the pile in the hall. “Is she going to stay here?”

Lionel really did not know what answer to make.

“She came, expecting to stay,” he said, after a pause. “She did not know but your mistress: was still here. Should she remain, I dare say Lady Verner, or my sister, will join her. You have beds ready?”

“Plenty of them, sir, at five minutes’ notice.”

When Lionel entered the room, Sibylla was in the same attitude, shivering over the fire. Unnaturally cold she appeared to be, and yet her cheeks were brilliantly bright, as if with a touch of fever.

“I fear you have caught cold on the journey to-day,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” she answered. “I am cold from nervousness. I went cold at the station when they told me that my aunt was dead, and I have been shivering ever since. Never mind me: it will go off presently.”

Lionel drew a chair to the other side of the fire, compassionately regarding her. He could have found in his heart to take her in his arms, and warm her there.

“What was that, about a codicil?” she suddenly asked him. “When my aunt wrote to me upon Mr. Verner’s death, she said that a codicil had been lost: or that, otherwise, the estate would have been yours.”

Lionel explained it to her. Concealing nothing.

“Then—if that codicil had been forthcoming, Frederick’s share would have been but five hundred pounds?”

“That is all.”

“It was very little to leave him,” she musingly rejoined.

“And still less to leave me, considering my nearer relationship—my nearer claims. When the codicil could not be found, the will had to be acted upon: and five hundred pounds was all the sum it gave me.”

“Has the codicil never been found?”

“Never.”

“How very strange! “What became of it, do you think?”

“I wish I could think what,” replied Lionel. “Although Verner’s Pride has come to me without it, it would be satisfactory to solve the mystery.”

Sibylla looked round cautiously, and sunk her voice. “Could Tynn or his wife have done anything with it? You say they were present when it was signed.”

“Most decidedly they did not. Both of them were anxious that I should succeed.”

“It is so strange! To look a paper up in a desk, and for it to disappear of its own accord! The moths could not have got in and eaten it?”

“Scarcely,” smiled Lionel. “The day before your aunt died, she—”

“Don’t talk of that,” interrupted Mrs. Massingbird. “I will hear about her death to-morrow. I shall be ill if I cry much to-night.”

She sunk into silence. and Lionel did not interrupt it. It continued, until his quick ears caught the sound of the groom’s return. The man rode his horse round to the stables at once. Presently Tynn came in with a note. It was from Lady Verner. A few lines, written hastily with a pencil:

“I do not understand your request, Lionel, or why you make it. Whatever may be my opinion of Frederick Massingbird’s widow, I will not insult her sense of propriety by supposing that she would attempt to remain at Verner’s Pride now her aunt is dead. It is absurd of you to ask me to come: neither shall I send Decima. Were I and Decima residing with you, it would not be the place for Sibylla Massingbird. She has her own home to go to.”

There was no signature. Lionel knew his mother’s handwriting too well to require the addition. It was just the note that he might have expected her to write.

What was he to do? In the midst of his ruminations, Sibylla rose.

“I am warm now,” she said. “I should like to go up-stairs and take this heavy shawl off.”

Lionel rang the bell for Mrs. Tynn. And Sibylla left the room with her.