Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/695

. 13, 1862.]

battle that there was with Mrs. Verner! She cried, she sobbed, she protested, she stormed, she raved. Willing enough, was she, to go to Lady Verner’s; indeed the proposed visit appeared to be exceedingly palatable to her; but she was not willing to go without Mademoiselle Benoite. She was used to Benoite; Benoite dressed her, and waited on her, and read to her, and took charge of her things; Benoite was in her confidence, kept her purse; she could not do without Benoite, and it was barbarous of Lionel to wish it. How could she manage without a maid?

Lionel gravely laid his hand upon her shoulder. Some husbands might have reminded her that until she married him she had never known the services of a personal attendant: that she had gone all the way to Melbourne, had—as John Massingbird had expressed it with regard to himself—been knocking about there, and had come back home again alone, all without so much as thinking of one. Not so Lionel. He laid his hand upon her shoulder in his grave kindness.

“Sibylla, do you forget that we have no longer the means to keep ourselves? I must find a way to do that, before I can afford you a lady’s maid. My dear, I am very sorry; you know I am; for that, and all the other discomforts that you are meeting with; but there is no help for it. I trust that some time or other I shall be able to remedy it.”

“We should not have to keep her,” argued Sibylla. “She’d live with Lady Verner’s servants.”

Neither did he remind her that Lady Verner would have sufficient tax, keeping them, himself and her. One would have thought her own delicacy of feeling might have suggested it.