Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/674

666 “Anybody but you, Lionel, would never allow him to turn you out. Why don’t you dispute the right with him? Turn him out, and defy him!”

He did not tell Sibylla that she was talking like a child. He only said that John Massingbird’s claim to Verner’s Pride was indisputable—that it had been his all along—and, in point of right, he himself had been the usurper.

“Then you mean,” she said, “to give him up quiet possession?”

“I have no other resource, Sibylla. To attempt any sort of resistance would be foolish as well as wrong.”

“I shan’t give it up. I shall stay here in spite of him. You may do as you like, but he is not going to get me out of my own home.”

“Sibylla, will you try and be rational for once? If ever a time called for it, it is the present. I ask you whether I shall seek after lodgings.”

“And I wonder that you are not ashamed to ask me,” retorted Sibylla, bursting into tears. “Lodgings, after Verner’s Pride! No. I’d rather die than go into lodgings. I daresay I shall die soon, with all this affliction.”

“I do not see what else there is for us but lodgings,” resumed Lionel, after a pause. “You will not hear of Jan’s proposition.”

“Go back to my old home!” she shrieked. “Like—as poor Fred used to say—bad money returned. No! that I never will. You are wrapt up in Jan: if he proposed to give me poison, you’d say Yes. I wish Fred had not died!”

“Will you be so good as tell me what you think ought to be done?” inquired Lionel.

“How can I think? Where’s the good of asking me? I think the least you can do in this wretchedness, is to take as much worry off me as you can, Lionel.”

“It is what I wish to do,” he gently said. “But I can see only one plan for us, Sibylla—lodgings. Here we cannot stay: it is out of the question. To take a house is equally so. We have no furniture—no money, in short, to set up a house, or to keep it on. Jan’s plan, until I can turn myself round and see what’s to be done, would be the best. You would be going to your own sisters, who would take care of you, should I find it necessary to be away.”

“Where are you going?” she quickly asked.

“I must go somewhere and do something. I cannot lead an idle life, living upon other people’s charity, or let you live upon it. I must find some way of earning a livelihood: in London, perhaps. While I am looking out, you would be with your sisters.”

“Then Lionel, hear me!” she cried, her throat working, her blue eyes flashing, with a strange light. “I will never go home to my sisters! I will never, so long as I live, enter that house again, to reside! You are no better than—than—a bear—to wish me to do it.”

What was he to do? She was his wife, and he must provide for her: but she would go neither into lodgings, nor to the proposed home. Lionel set his wits to work.

“I wonder—whether—my mother—would invite us there, for a short while?” The words were spoken slowly; reluctantly: as if there were an undercurrent of strong doubt in his mind. “Would you go to Deerham Court for a time, Sibylla, if Lady Verner were agreeable?”

“Yes,” said Sibylla, after a minute’s consideration. “I’d go there.”

Deeming it well that something should be decided, Lionel went down stairs, caught up his hat, and proceeded to Deerham Court. He did not say a word about his wife’s caprice, that two plans, proposed for her, had been rejected. He simply asked his mother whether she would temporarily receive him and his wife, until he could look round and decide on the future.

To his great surprise, Lady Verner answered that she would; and answered readily. Lionel, knowing the light in which she regarded his wife, had anticipated he knew not what of objection, if not of positive refusal.

“I wish you to come here, Lionel: I intended to send for you and tell you so,” was the reply of Lady Verner. “You have no home to turn to, and I could not have it said that my son in his strait was at fault for one. I never thought to receive your wife inside my doors, but for your sake I will do so. No servants, you understand, Lionel.”

“Certainly not,” he answered. “I cannot afford servants now as a matter of luxury.”

“I can neither afford them for you, nor is there room in my house to accommodate them. This applies to that French maid of yours,” Lady Verner pointedly added. “I do not like the woman: nothing would induce me to admit her here, even were circumstances convenient. Any attendance that your wife may require, she shall have.”

Lionel smiled, a sad smile. “Be easy, mother. The time for my wife to keep a French maid has gone by. I thank you very sincerely.”

And so Lionel Verner was once more to be turned from Verner’s Pride, to take up his abode with his wife in his mother’s home. When were his wanderings to be at rest?

“ the pacha has told you that I was once a dragoman—ah, I see he has; but I can assure you that I am not ashamed to acknowledge it. I am, as you know, an Italian, and had two uncles in orders at Rome.

“I was at Cairo, teaching a French engineer how to make himself understood by the natives (for fortunately I had learnt Arabic in my youth), when I received a note from an Italian nobleman, inclosing another from my uncle at Rome. The same evening I presented myself at the Consulate, according to Count ’s request. The count was reputed to be one of the richest of the Roman nobility. His object in coming to Egypt was, he told me, to visit the ruins, and to excavate such portions of them as seemed to offer the most likely chance of meeting with objects of interest. His preparations for carrying on the work were, as I afterwards found, very complete. The tools he had brought with him were much better than