Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/450

442 Sometimes when she was ill, or unwilling to be disturbed, she’d say ‘Roy, do this,’ or, ‘Roy, do the other.’ She—”

“Mrs. Verner never gave you authority to sign,” impressively repeated Lionel. “She is gone, and therefore cannot be referred to; but you know as well as I do, that she never did give you such authority. Come to Verner’s Pride to-morrow morning at ten, and see these papers.”

Roy signified his obedience, and Lionel departed. He bent his steps towards home, taking the field way: all the bitter experiences of the day rising up within his mind. Ah! try as he would, he could not deceive himself: he could not banish or drown the one ever-present thought. The singular information imparted by Mr. Bourne; the serio-comic tribulation of Mrs. Peckaby, waiting for her white donkey; the mysterious behaviour of Dinah Roy, in which there was undoubtedly more than met the ear; all these could not cover for a moment the one burning fact—Lucy’s love, and his own dishonour. In vain Lionel flung off his hat, heedless of any second sun-stroke, and pushed his hair from his heated brow. It was of no use: as he had felt when he went out from the presence of Lucy, so he felt now—stifled with dishonour.

Sibylla was at a table, writing notes. Several were on it, already written, and in their envelopes. She looked up at him.

“Oh, Lionel, what a while you have been out! I thought you were never coming home.”

He leaned down and kissed her. Although his conscience had revealed to him, that day, that he loved another better, she should never feel the difference. Nay, the very knowledge that it was so, would render him all the more careful to give her marks of love.

“I have been to my mother’s, and to one or two more places. What are you so busy over, dear?”

“I am writing invitations,” said Sibylla.

“Invitations! Before people have called upon you?”

“They can call all the same. I have been asking Mary Tynn how many beds she can, by dint of screwing, afford. I am going to fill them all. I shall ask them for a month. How grave you look, Lionel!”

“In this first, early sojourn together in our own house, Sibylla, I think we shall be happier alone.”

“Oh, no, we should not. I love visitors. We shall be together all the same, Lionel.”

“My little wife,” he said, “if you cared for me as I care for you, you would not feel the want of visitors just now.”

And there was no sophistry in this speech. He had come to the conviction that Lucy ought to have been his wife, but he did care for Sibylla very much. The prospect of a house full of guests at the present moment, appeared most displeasing to him, if only as a matter of taste.

“Put it off for a few weeks, Sibylla.”

Sibylla pouted.

“It is of no use preaching, Lionel. If you are to be a preaching husband, I shall be sorry I married you. Fred was never that.”

Lionel’s face turned blood-red. Sibylla put up her hand, and drew it carelessly down.

“You must let me have my own way for this once,” she coaxingly said. “What’s the use of my bringing all those loves of things from Paris, if we are to live in a dungeon, and nobody’s to see them? I must invite them, Lionel.”

“Very well,” he answered, yielding the point. Yielding it the more readily from the consciousness above spoken of.

“There’s my dear Lionel! I knew you would never turn tyrant. And now I want something else.”

“What’s that?” asked Lionel.

“A cheque.”

“A cheque? I gave you one this morning, Sibylla.”

“Oh! but the one you gave me is for housekeeping—for Tynn, and all that. I want one for myself. I am not going to have my expenses come out of the housekeeping.”

Lionel sat down to write one, a good-natured smile on his face. “I’m sure I don’t know what you will find to spend it in, after all the finery you bought in Paris,” he said, in a joking tone. “How much shall I fill it in for?”

“As much as you will;” replied Sibylla, too eagerly. “Couldn’t you give it me in blank, and let me fill it in?”

He made no answer. He drew it for a £100, and gave it her.

“Will that do, my dear?”

She drew his face down again caressingly. But, in spite of the kisses left upon his lips, Lionel had awoke to the conviction, firm and undoubted, that his wife did not love him.



 portrait hangs opposite to me—above the piano; it is very delicately painted, only the most transparent shadows have fallen upon that exquisite oval face.

Tradition says that this likeness was taken abroad by an Italian artist, and all picture-loving strangers, who enter our drawing-room, look at it again and again, as if they knew instinctively that a story must belong to the owner of the remarkable countenance which confronts them with so much cold dignity, and a calm defiant expression of proud reserve. Nor are these visitors mistaken. The original of that portrait was a most prosperous and undetected criminal, who buried in her own breast all the secret penalties and harassing anxieties which inevitably pursue ; having sinned advisedly, and made her own bargain with her own soul, she kept her dark counsel securely to the last half hour of her life, and was carried to her grave with all the pomp which became a most virtuous and right honourable matron, attended by two chief mourners, who had courted and wedded her in true love and faith—both of whom she had cruelly deceived, yet both forgave her, and were bitterly grieved to find her so guilty at last. She must have been a very lovely woman. The brown hair is turned off her fine forehead, but one shadowy curl wanders over her neck and