Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/639

. 29, 1862.]

night passed quietly at Verner’s Pride. Not, for all its inmates, pleasantly. Faithful Tynn bolted and barred the doors and windows with his own hand, like he might have done on the anticipated invasion of a burglar; and then took up his station to watch the approaches to the house, and never stirred till morning light. There may have run in Tynn’s mind some vague fear of violence, should his master and Frederick Massingbird come in contact.

How did Lionel pass it? Wakeful and watchful as Tynn. He went to bed; but sleep, for him, there was none. His wife, by his side, slept all through the night. Better, of course, for her that it should be so: but, that her frame of mind could be sufficiently easy to admit of sleep, was a perfect marvel to Lionel. Had he needed proof to convince him how shallow was her mind, how incapable she was of depth of feeling, of thought, this would have supplied it. She slept throughout the night. Lionel never closed his eyes: his brain was at work, his mind was troubled, his heart was aching. Not for himself. His position was certainly not one to be envied: but, in his great anxiety for his wife, self passed out of sight. To what conflict might she not be about to be exposed! to what unseemly violence of struggle, outwardly and inwardly, might she not expose herself! He knew quite well that, according to the laws of God and man, she was Frederick Massingbird’s wife; not his. He should never think—when the time came—of disputing Frederick Massingbird’s claim to her. But, what would she