Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/196

188 and expect him in momentarily. Ah, he has had trouble in all ways. His wife brought him nothing else.”

“Jan dropped a hint of that,” said Sir Henry. “I should think he would not be in a hurry to marry again!”

“I should think not, indeed. He—Lucy, where are you going?”

Lucy turned round with her crimsoned face. “Nowhere, Lady Verner.”

“I thought I heard a carriage stop, my dear. See if it is Lionel.”

Lucy walked to the window in the other room. Sir Henry followed her. The blue and silver carriage of Verner’s Pride was at the court gates, Lionel stepping from it. He came in, looking curiously at the grey head next to Lucy’s.

“A noble form, a noble face!” murmured Sir Henry Tempest.

He wore still the mourning for his wife. A handsome man never looks so well in any other attire. There was no doubt that he divined now who the stranger was, and a glad smile of welcome parted his lips. Sir Henry met him on the threshold, and grasped both his hands.

“I should have known you, Lionel, anywhere, from your likeness to your father.”

Lionel could not let the evening go over without speaking of the great secret. When he and Sir Henry were left together in the dining-room, he sought the opportunity. It was afforded by a remark of Sir Henry’s.

“After our sojourn in London shall be over, I must look out for a residence, and settle down. Perhaps I shall purchase one. But I must first of all ascertain what locality would be agreeable to Lucy.”

“Sir Henry,” said Lionel, in a low tone, “Lucy’s future residence is fixed upon—if you will accord your permission.”

Sir Henry Tempest, who was in the act of raising his wine-glass to his lips, set it down again and looked at Lionel.

“I want her at Verner’s Pride.”

It appeared that Sir Henry could not understand—did not take in the meaning of the words.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“I have loved her for years,” answered Lionel, the scarlet spot of emotion rising to his cheeks. “We—we have known each other’s sentiments a long while. But I did not intend to speak more openly to Lucy until I had seen you. To-day, however, in the sudden excitement of hearing of her contemplated departure, I betrayed myself. Will you give her to me, Sir Henry?”

Sir Henry Tempest looked grave.

“It cannot have been so very long an attachment,” he observed. “The time since your wife’s death can only be counted by months.”

“True. But the time, since I loved Lucy, can be counted by years. I loved her before I married,” he added in a low tone.

“Why, then, have married another?” demanded Sir Henry, after a pause.

“You may well ask it, Sir Henry,” he replied, the upright line in his brow showing out just then all too deep and plain. “I engaged myself to my first wife in an unguarded moment: as soon as the word was spoken I became aware that she was less dear to me than Lucy. I might have retracted: but the retraction would have left a stain on my honour that could never be effaced. I am not the first man who has paid by years of penitence for a word spoken in the heat of passion.”

True enough! Sir Henry simply nodded his head in answer.

“Yes, I loved Lucy; I married another, loving her; I never ceased loving her all throughout my married life. And I had to beat down my feelings; to suppress and hide them in the best manner that I could.”

“And Lucy?” involuntarily uttered Sir Henry.

“Lucy—may I dare to say it to you?—loved me,” he answered, his breath coming fast. “I believe, from my very heart, that she loved me in that early time, as deeply perhaps as I loved her. I have never exchanged a word with her upon the point; but I cannot conceal from myself that it was the unhappy fact.”

“Did you know it at the time?”

“No!” he answered, raising his hand to his brow, on which the drops were gathering. “I did not suspect it until it was too late; until I was married. She was so child-like.”

Sir Henry Tempest sat in silence, probably revolving the information.

“If you had known it—what then?”

“Do not ask me,” replied Lionel, his bewailing tone strangely full of pain. “I cannot tell what I should have done. It would have been Lucy—love—versus honour. And a Verner never sacrificed honour yet. And yet—it seems to me that I sacrificed honour in the course I took. Let the question drop, Sir Henry. It is a time I cannot bear to recur to.”

Neither spoke for some minutes. Lionel’s face was shaded by his hand. Presently he looked up.

“Do not part us, Sir Henry!” he implored, his voice quite hoarse with its emotion, its earnestness. “We could neither of us bear it. I have waited for her long.”

“I will deal candidly with you,” said Sir Henry. “In the old days it was a favourite project of mine and your father’s that our families should become connected by the union of our children—you and Lucy. We only spoke of it to each other; saying nothing to our wives—they might have set to work, women fashion, and urged it on by plotting and planning: we were content to let events take their course, and to welcome the fruition, should it come. Nearly the last words Sir Lionel said to me when he was dying of his wound, were, that he should not live to see the marriage; but he hoped I might. Years afterwards, when Lucy was placed with Lady Verner—I knew no other friend in Europe to whom I would entrust her—her letters to me were filled with Lionel Verner. ‘Lionel was so kind to her!’—‘Everybody liked Lionel!’ in one shape or other, you were sure to be the theme. I heard how you lost the estate; of your coming to stay at Lady Verner’s; of a long illness you had there; of your regaining the estate through the death of the Massingbirds; and—next—of your marriage to Frederick Massingbird’s widow.