Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/476

468 nothing but what ought to be there. The wide lawn, the sweet flowers closed to the night, the remoter parts where the trees were thick, all stood cold and still in the white moonlight. But of human disturber there was none.

Lionel went back again, plucking a white geranium blossom and a sprig of sweet verbena on his way. Lucy was sitting alone, as he had left her.

“It was a false alarm,” he whispered. “Nothing’s there, but the tree.”

“It was not a false alarm,” she answered; “I saw him move away as you went on to the lawn. He drew back towards the thicket.”

“Are you sure?” questioned Lionel, his tone betraying that he doubted whether she was not mistaken.

“Oh yes, I am sure,” said Lucy. “Do you know what my old nurse used to tell me when I was a child?” she asked, lifting her face to his. “She said I had the Indian sight, because I could see so far and so distinctly. Some of the Indians have the gift greatly, you know. I am quite certain that I saw the object—and it looked like the figure of a man—go swiftly away from the tree across the grass. I could not see him to the end of the lawn, but he must have gone into the plantation. I daresay he saw you coming towards him.”

Lionel smiled.

“I wish I had caught the spy. He should have answered to me for being there. Do you like verbena, Lucy?”

He laid the verbena and geranium on her lap, and she took them up mechanically.

“I do not like spies,” she said, in a dreamy tone. “In India they have been known to watch the inmates of a house in the evening, and to bowstring one of those they were watching, before the morning. You are laughing! Indeed, my nurse used to tell me tales of it.”

“We have no spies in England—in that sense, Lucy. When I used the word spy, it was with no meaning attached to it. It is not impossible but it may be a sweetheart of one of the maid-servants, come up from Deerham for a rendezvous. Be under no apprehension.”

At that moment, the voice of his wife came ringing through the room.

“Mr. Verner!”

He turned to the call. Waiting to say another word to Lucy, as a thought struck him.

“You would prefer not to remain at the window, perhaps. Let me take you to a more sheltered seat.”

“Oh no, thank you,” she answered impulsively. “I like being at the window. It is not of myself that I was thinking.” And Lionel moved away.

“Is it not true that the fountains at Versailles played expressly for me?” eagerly asked Sibylla, as he approached her. “Sir Rufus won’t believe that they did. The first time we were in Paris, you know.”

Sir Rufus Hautley was by her side then, looked at Lionel.

“They never play for private individuals, Mr. Verner. At least, if they do, things have changed.”

“My wife thought they did,” returned Lionel, with a smile. “It was all the same.”

“They did, Lionel; you know they did,did,” [sic] vehemently asserted Sibylla. “De Coigny told me so: and he held authority in the Government.”

“I know that De Coigny told you so, and that you believed him,” answered Lionel, still smiling. “I did not believe him.”

Sibylla turned her head away petulantly from her husband.

“You are saying it to annoy me. I’ll never appeal to you again. Sir Rufus, they did play expressly for me.”

“It may be bad taste, but I’d rather see the waterworks at St. Cloud than at Versailles,” observed a Mr. Gordon, some acquaintance that they had picked up in town, and to whom it had been Sibylla’s pleasure to give an invitation. “Cannonby wrote me word last week from Paris—”

“Who?” sharply interrupted Sibylla.

Mr. Gordon looked surprised. Her tone had betrayed something of eager alarm, not to say terror.

“Captain Cannonby, Mrs. Verner. A friend of mine just returned from Australia. Business took him to Paris as soon as he landed.”

“Is he from the Melbourne port? Is his Christian name Lawrence?” she reiterated, breathlessly.

“Yes—to both questions,” replied Mr. Gordon.

Sibylla shrieked, and lifted her handkerchief to her face. They gathered round her in consternation. One offering smelling-salts, one running for water. Lionel gently drew the handkerchief from her face. It was white as death.

“What ails you, my dear?” he whispered.

She seemed to recover her equanimity as suddenly as she had lost it, and the colour began to come into her cheeks again.

“His name—Cannonby’s—puts me in mind of those unhappy days,” she said, not in the low tone used by her husband, but aloud—speaking, in fact, to all around her. “I did not know Captain Cannonby had returned. When did he come, Mr. Gordon?”

“About eight or nine days ago.”

“Has he made his fortune?”

Mr. Gordon laughed.

“I fancy not. Cannonby was always of a roving nature. I expect he got tired of the Australian world before fortune had time to find him out.”

Sibylla was soon deep in her flirtations again. It is not erroneous to call them so. But they were innocent flirtations—the result of vanity. Lionel moved away.

Another commotion. Some great, long-legged fellow, without ceremony or warning, came striding in at the window close to Lucy Tempest. Lucy’s thoughts had been buried—it is hard to say where, and her eyes were strained to the large yew-tree upon the grass. The sudden entrance startled her, albeit she was not of a startlish temperament. With Indian bow-strings in the mind, and fancied moonlight spies before the sight, a scream was inevitable.

Who should it be but Jan! Jan, of course.