Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/81

. 10, 1863.] pulling it here and there with her thin and trembling hands.

“What are you doing?” asked Lionel.

“Trying on wreaths,” she replied.

“So I perceive. But why?”

“To see which suits me best. This looks too white for me, does it not?” she added, turning her countenance towards him.

If to be the same hue as the complexion was “too white,” it certainly did look so. The dead white of the roses was not more utterly colourless than Sibylla’s face. She was like a ghost: she often looked so now.

“Sibylla,” he said, without answering her question, “you are surely not thinking of going to Sir Edmund’s to-morrow night?”

“Yes I am.”

“You said you would write a refusal?”

“I know I said it. I saw how crossgrained you were going to be over it, and that’s why I said it to you. I accepted the invitation.”

“But, my dear, you must not go!”

Sibylla was flinging off the white wreath, and taking up a pink one, which she began to fix in her hair. She did not answer.

“After all,” deliberated she, “I have a great mind to wear pearls. Not a wreath at all.”

“Sibylla! I say you must not go.”

“Now, Lionel, it is of no use your talking. I have made up my mind to go; I did at first; and go I shall. Don’t you remember,” she continued, turning her face from the glass towards him, her careless tone changing for one of sharpness, “that papa said I must not be crossed?”

“But you are not in a state to go out,” remonstrated Lionel. “Jan forbids it utterly.”

“Jan? Jan’s in your pay. He says what you tell him to say.”

“Child, how can you give utterance to such things?” he asked, in a tone of emotion. “When Jan interdicts your going out he has only your welfare at heart. And you know that I have it. Evening air and scenes of excitement are equally pernicious for you.”

“I shall go,” returned Sibylla. “You are going, you know,” she resentfully said. “I wonder you don’t propose that I should be locked up at home in a dark closet, while you are there, dancing.”

A moment’s deliberation in his mind, and a rapid resolution.

“I shall not go, Sibylla,” he rejoined. “I shall stay at home with you.”

“Who says you are going to stay at home?”

“I say it myself. I intend to do so. I shall do so.”

“Oh. Since when, pray, have you come to that decision?”

Had she not the penetration to see that he had come to it then; then, as he talked to her; that he had come to it for her sake? That she should not have it to say he went out while she was at home. Perhaps she did see it: but it was nearly impossible to Sibylla not to indulge in bitter, aggravating retorts.

“I understand!” she continued, throwing up her head with an air of supreme scorn. “Thank you, don’t trouble. I am not too ill to stoop, ill as you wish to make me out to be.”

In displacing the wreath on her head to a different position, she had let it fall. Lionel’s stooping to pick it up had called for the last remark. As he handed it to her, he took her hand.

“Sibylla, promise me to think no more of this. Do give it up.”

“I won’t give it up,” she vehemently answered. “I shall go. And, what’s more, I shall dance.”

Lionel quitted her and sought his mother. Lady Verner was not very well that afternoon, and was keeping her room. He found her in an invalid chair.

“Mother, I have come to tell you that I cannot accompany you to-morrow evening,” he said. “You must please excuse me.”

“Why so?” asked Lady Verner.

“I would so very much rather not go,” he answered. “Besides, I do not care to leave Sibylla.”

Lady Verner made no observation for a few moments. A curious smile, almost a pitying smile, was hovering on her lips.

“Lionel, you are a model husband. Your father was not a bad one, as husbands go; but—he would not have bent his neck to such treatment from me, as you take from Mrs. Verner.”

“No?” returned Lionel, with good-humour.

“It is not right of you, Lionel, to leave me to go alone, with only Decima.”

“Let Jan accompany you, mother.”

“Jan!” uttered Lady Verner, in the very extreme of astonishment. “I should be surprised to see Jan attempt to enter such a scene. Jan! I don’t suppose he possesses a coat and waistcoat.”

Lionel smiled, quitted his mother, and bent his steps towards Jan Verner’s.

Not to solicit Jan’s attendance upon Lady Verner to the festival scene, or to make close inquiries as to the state of Jan’s wardrobe. No; Lionel had a more serious motive for his visit.

He found Jan and Master Cheese enjoying a sort of battle. The surgery looked as if it had been turned upside down, so much confusion reigned. White earthenware vessels of every shape and form, glass jars, huge cylinders, brass pots, metal pans, were scattered about in inextricable confusion. Master Cheese had recently got up a taste for chemical experiments, in which it appeared necessary to call into requisition an unlimited quantity of accessories in the apparatus line. He had been entering upon an experiment that afternoon, when Jan came unexpectedly in, and caught him.

Not for the litter and confusion was Jan displeased, but because he found that Master Cheese had so bungled chemical properties in his head, so confounded one dangerous substance with another, that, five minutes later, the result would probably have been the blowing off of the surgery roof, and Master Cheese and his vessels with it. Jan was giving him a sharp and decisive word, not to attempt anything of the sort again, until he could bring more correct knowledge to bear upon it, when Lionel interrupted them.

“I want to speak to you, Jan,” he said.

“Here, you be off, and wash the powder off