Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/641

. 29, 1862.] stopped him with. “I will go. What is it to you?”

He turned without a remonstrance, and attended her to the carriage, placing her in it as considerately as though she had met him with a wife’s loving words. When she was seated, he leaned towards her.

“Would you like me to accompany you, Sibylla?”

“I don’t care about it.”

He closed the door in silence, his lips compressed. There were times when her fitful moods vexed him above common. This was one. When they knew not but the passing hour might be the last of their union, the last they should ever spend together, it was scarcely seemly to mar its harmony with ill-temper. At least, so felt Lionel. Sibylla spoke as he was turning away.

“Of course I thought you would go with me. I did not expect you would grumble at me for going.”

“Get my hat, Bennet,” he said. And he stepped in and took his seat beside her.

Courteously and smiling, as though not a shade of care were within ages of him, Lionel bowed to his guests as the carriage passed the breakfast-room windows. He saw that curious faces were directed to him; he felt that wondering comments, as to their early and sudden drive, were being spoken; he knew that the scene of the past evening was affording food for speculation. He could not help it; but these minor annoyances were as nothing, compared to the great trouble that absorbed him. The windows passed, he turned to his wife.

“I have neither grumbled at you for going, Sibylla; nor do I see cause for grumbling. Why should you charge me with it?”

“There! you are going to find fault with me again! Why are you so cross?”

Cross! He cross! Lionel suppressed at once the retort that was rising to his lips; as he had done hundreds of times before.

“Heaven knows, nothing was further from my thoughts than to be ‘cross, ” he answered, his tone full of pain. “Were I to be cross to you, Sibylla, in—in—what may be our last hour together, I should reflect upon myself for my whole life afterwards.”

“It is not our last hour together!” she vehemently answered. “Who says it is?”

“I trust it is not. But I cannot conceal from myself the fact that it may be so. Remember,” he added, turning to her with a sudden impulse, and clasping both her hands within his in a firm, impressive grasp—“remember that my whole life, since you became mine, has been spent for you: in promoting your happiness; in striving to give you more love than has been given to me. I have never met you with an unkind word; I have never given you a clouded look. You will think of this when we are separated. And, for myself, its remembrance will be to my conscience as a healing balm.”

Dropping her hands, he drew back to his corner of the chariot, his head leaning against the fair white watered silk, as if heavy with weariness. In truth, it was so: heavy with the weariness caused by carking care. He had spoken all too impulsively: the avowal was wrung from him in the moment’s bitter strife. A balm upon his conscience that he had done his duty by her in love? Ay. For, the love of his inmost heart had been another’s—not hers.

Sibylla did not understand the allusion. It was well. In her weak and trifling manner, she was subsiding into tears when the carriage suddenly stopped. Lionel, his thoughts never free, since a day or two, of Frederick Massingbird, looked up with a start, almost expecting to see him.

Lady Verner’s groom had been galloping on horseback to Verner’s Pride. Seeing Mr. Verner’s carriage, and himself inside it, he had made a sign to Wigham, who drew up. The man rode up to the window, a note in his hand.

“Miss Verner charged me to lose no time in delivering it to you, sir. She said it was immediate. I shouldn’t else have presumed to stop your carriage.”

He backed his horse a step or two, waiting for the answer, should there be any. Lionel ran his eyes over the contents of the note.

“Tell Miss Verner I will call upon her shortly, Philip.”

And the man, touching his hat, turned his horse round, and galloped back towards Deerham Court.

“What does she want? What is it?” impatiently asked Sibylla.

“My mother wishes to see me,” replied Lionel.

“And what else? I know that’s not all,” reiterated Sibylla, her tone a resentful one. “You have always secrets at Deerham Court against me.”

“Never in my life,” he answered. “You can read the note, Sibylla.”

She caught it up, devouring its few lines rapidly. Lionel believed it must be the doubt, the uncertainty, that was rendering her so irritable: in his heart he felt inclined to make every allowance for her; more perhaps than she deserved. There were but a few lines:

“Do come to us at once, my dear Lionel! A most strange report has reached us, and mamma is like one bereft of her senses. She wants you here to contradict it: she says, she knows it cannot have any foundation.

“.”

Somehow the words seemed to subdue Sibylla’s irritation. She returned the note to Lionel, and spoke in a hushed, gentle tone.

“Is it this report that she alludes to, do you think, Lionel?”

“I fear so. I do not know what other it can be. I am vexed that it should already have reached the ears of my mother.”

“Of course!” resentfully spoke Sibylla. “You would have spared her!”

“I would have spared my mother, had it been in my power. I would have spared my wife,” he added, bending his grave, kind face towards her, “that and all other ill.”

She dashed down the front blinds of the