Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/194

186 has seemed longer to me than it did in all the previous years.”

“She’s a nice girl,” returned Jan. “The nicest girl in Deerham.”

“Is she pretty?” asked Sir Henry.

The question a little puzzled Jan.

“Well, I think so,” answered he. “Girls are much alike for that, as far as I see. I like Miss Lucy’s look, though: and that’s the chief thing in faces.”

“How is your brother, Janus?”

Jan burst out laughing.

“Don’t call me Janus, Sir Henry. I am not known by that name. They wanted me to have Janus on my door-plate; but nobody would have thought it meant me, and the practice might have gone off.”

“You are Jan, as you used to be, then? I remember Lucy has called you so in her letters to me.”

“I shall never be anything but Jan. What does it matter? One name’s as good as another. You were asking after Lionel. He has got Verner’s Pride again. All in safety now.”

“What a very extraordinary course of events seems to have taken place, with regard to Verner’s Pride!” remarked Sir Henry. “Now your brother’s, now not his; then his again, then not his! I cannot make it out.”

“It was extraordinary,” assented Jan. “But the uncertain tenure is at an end, and Lionel is installed there for life. There ought never to have been any question of his right to it.”

“He has had the misfortune to lose his wife,” observed Sir Henry.

“It was not much of a misfortune,” returned Jan, always plain. “She was too sickly ever to enjoy life; and I know she must have worried Lionel nearly out of his patience.”

Jan had said at the station that Deerham Court was “close by.” His active legs may have found it so; but Sir Henry began to think it rather far, than close. As they reached the gates Sir Henry spoke.

“I suppose there is an inn near, where I can send my servant to lodge. There may not be accommodation for him at Lady Verner’s?”

“There’s accommodation enough for that,” said Jan. “They have plenty of room, and old Catherine can make him up a bed.”

Lady Verner and Lucy were out. They had not returned from the call on Mrs. Bitterworth—for it was the afternoon spoken of in the last chapter. Jan showed Sir Henry in; told him to ring for any refreshment he wanted; and then left.

“I can’t stay,” he remarked. “My day’s rounds are not over yet.”

But scarcely had Jan got outside the gate when he met the carriage. He put up his hand, and the coachman stopped. Jan advanced to the window, a broad smile upon his face.

“What will you give me for some news, Miss Lucy?”

Lucy’s thoughts were running upon certain other news; news known but to herself and to one more. A strangely happy light shone in her soft brown eyes, as she turned them on Jan; a rich damask flush on the cheeks where his lips had so lately been.

“Does it concern me, Jan?”

“It doesn’t much concern anybody else. Guess.”

“I never can guess anything; you know I can’t, Jan,” she answered, smiling, “You must please tell me.”

“Well,” said Jan, “there’s an arrival. Come by the train.”

“Oh, Jan! Not papa?”

Jan nodded.

“You will find him in-doors. Old Bat’s come with him.”

Lucy never could quite remember the details of the meeting. She knew that her father held her to him fondly, and then put her from him to look at her; the tears blinding her eyes and his.

“You are pretty, Lucy,” he said. “Very pretty. I asked Jan whether you were or not, but he could not tell me.”

“Jan!” slightingly spoke Lady Verner, while Lucy laughed, in spite of her tears. “It is of no use asking Jan anything of that sort, Sir Henry. I don’t believe Jan knows one young lady’s face from another.”

It seemed to be all confusion for some time: all bustle; nothing but questions and answers. But when they had assembled in the drawing-room again, after making ready for dinner, things wore a calmer aspect.

“You must have thought I never was coming home!” remarked Sir Henry to Lady Verner, “I have contemplated it so long.”

“I suppose your delays were unavoidable,” she answered.

“Yes—in a measure. I should not have come now, but for the relieving you of Lucy. Your letters, for some time past, have appeared to imply that you were vexed with her; or tired of her. And in truth I have taxed your patience and goodnature unwarrantably. I do not know how I shall repay your kindness, Lady Verner.”

“I have been repaid throughout, Sir Henry,” was the quiet reply of Lady Verner. “The society of Lucy has been a requital in full. I rarely form an attachment, and when I do form one it is never demonstrative; but I have learned to love Lucy as I love my own daughter, and it will be a real grief to part with her. Not but what she has given me great vexation.”

“Ah! In what way?”

“The years have gone on and on since she came to me; and I was in hopes of returning her to you with some prospect in view of the great end of a young lady’s life—marriage. I was placed here as her mother; and I felt more responsible in regard to her establishment in life than I did to Decima’s. We have been at issue upon the point, Sir Henry: Lucy and I.”

Sir Henry turned his eyes on his daughter. If that is not speaking figuratively, considering that he had scarcely taken his eyes off her. A fair picture she looked, sitting there in her white evening dress and her pearl ornaments. Young, lovely, girlish she looked, as she did the first day she came to Lady Verner’s and took up her modest