Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/697

. 13, 1862.] was as good to John Massingbird as another. He must have gone to the Heralds’ College had he wanted to set up arms on his own account.

And that’s how Lionel and his wife went out of Verner’s Pride. It seemed as if Deerham pavement and Deerham windows were lined on purpose to watch the exodus. The time of their departure had got wind.

“I have done a job that goes again the grain, sir,” said Wigham to his late master, when the carriage had deposited its freight at Deerham Court, and was about to go back again. “I never thought, sir, to drive you out of Verner’s Pride for the last time.”

“I suppose not, Wigham. I thought it as little as you.”

“You’ll not forget, sir, that I should be glad to serve you, should you ever have room for me. I’d rather live with you, sir, than with anybody else in the world.”

“Thank you, Wigham. I fear that time will be very far off.”

“Or, if my lady should be changing her coachman, sir, perhaps she’d think of me. It don’t seem nateral to me, sir, to drive anybody but a Verner. Next to yourself, sir, I’d be proud to serve her ladyship.”

Lionel, in his private opinion, believed that Lady Verner would soon be compelled to part with her own coachman, to lay down her carriage. Failing the income she had derived from his revenues, in addition to her own, he did not see how she was to keep up many of her present expenses. He said farewell to Wigham and entered the Court.

Decima had hastened forward to welcome Sibylla. Decima was one, who, in her quiet way, was always trying to make the best of surrounding circumstances,—not for herself, but for others. Let things be ever so dark, she would contrive to extract out of them some little ray of brightness. Opposite as they were in person, in disposition she and Jan were true brother and sister. She came forward to the door, a glad smile upon her face, and dressed rather more than usual: it was one of her ways, the unwonted dress, of showing welcome and consideration to Sibylla.

“You are late, Mrs. Verner,” she said, taking her cordially by the hand. “We have been expecting you some time. Catherine! Thérèse, see to these packages.”

Lady Verner had actually come out also. She was too essentially the lady to show anything but strict courtesy to Sibylla, now that she was about to become an inmate under her roof. What the effort cost her, she best knew. It was no light one: and Lionel felt that it was not. She stood in the hall, just outside the door of the ante-room, and took Sibylla’s hand as she approached.

“I am happy to see you, Mrs. Verner,” she said, with stately courtesy. “I hope you will make yourself at home.”

They all went together into the drawing-room, in a crowd, as it were. Lucy was there, dressed also. She came up with a smile on her young and charming face, and welcomed Sibylla.

“It is nearly dinner-time,” said Decima to Sibylla. “Will you come with me up-stairs, and I will show you the arrangements for your rooms. Lionel, will you come?”

She led the way up-stairs to the pretty sitting-room with its blue-and-white furniture, hitherto called “Miss Decima’s room:” the one that Lionel had sat in when he was growing convalescent.

“Mamma thought you would like a private sitting-room to retire to when you felt disposed,” said Decima. “We are only sorry it is not larger. This will be exclusively yours.”

“It is small,” was the not very gracious reply of Sibylla.

“And it is turning you out of it, Decima!” added Lionel.

“I did not use it much,” she answered, proceeding to another room on the same floor. “This is your bed-room, and this the dressing-room,” she added, entering a spacious apartment and throwing open the door of a smaller one which led out of it. “We hope that you will find everything comfortable. And the luggage that you don’t require to use, can be carried up stairs.”

Lionel had been looking round, somewhat puzzled.

“Decima! was not this Lucy’s room?”

“Lucy proposed to give it up to you,” said Decima. “It is the largest room we have, and the only one that has a dressing-room opening from it, except mamma’s. Lucy has gone to the small room at the end of the corridor.”

“But it is not right for us to turn out Lucy,” debated Lionel. “I do not like the idea of it.”

“It was Lucy herself who first thought of it, Lionel. I am sure she is glad to do anything she can, to render you and Mrs. Verner comfortable. She has been quite anxious to make it look nice, and moved nearly all the things herself.”

“It does look comfortable,” acquiesced Lionel as he stood before the blaze of the fire, feeling grateful to Decima, to his mother, to Lucy, to all of them. “Sibylla, this is one of your fires; you like a blaze.”

“And Catherine will wait upon you, Mrs. Verner,” continued Decima. “She understands it. She waited on mamma for two years, before Thérèse came. Should you require your hair done, Thérèse will do that; mamma thinks Catherine would not make any hand at it.”

She quitted the room as she spoke and closed the door, saying that she would send up Catherine then. Lionel had his eyes fixed on the room and its furniture; it was really an excellent room,—spacious, lofty, and fitted up with every regard to comfort as well as to appearance. In the old days, it was Jan’s room, and Lionel scarcely remembered to have been inside it since; but it looked very superior now to what it used to look then. Lady Verner had never troubled herself to improvise superfluous decorations for Jan. Lionel’s chief attention was riveted on the bed, an Arabian, handsomely carved, mahogany bed, with white muslin hangings, lined with pink, matching with the window-curtains. The hangings were new; but he felt certain that the bed was the one hitherto used by his mother.

He stepped into the dressing-room, feeling more