Verner's Pride. Mrs. Henry Wood
did she do that?"
"She was on a chair in the store-room, looking in the cupboard. She—"
"Of course; that's just like Decima!" crossly responded Lady Verner. "She is everlastingly at something or other, doing half the work of a servant about the house."
Lionel made no reply. He knew that, but for Decima, the house would be less comfortable than it was for Lady Verner; and that what Decima did, she did in love.
"Will you go to the station?" he inquired.
"I! In this cold wind! How can you ask me, Lionel? I should get my face chapped irretrievably. If Decima cannot go, you must go alone."
"But how shall I know Miss Tempest?"
"You must find her out," said Lady Verner. "Her mother was as tall as a giantess; perhaps she is the same. Is Decima much hurt?"
"She thinks it is only a sprain. We have sent for Jan."
"For Jan! Much good he will do!" returned Lady Verner, in so contemptuous a tone as to prove she had no very exalted opinion of Mr. "Jan's" abilities.
Lionel went out to the carriage, and stepped in. The footman did not shut the door. "And Miss Verner, sir?"
"Miss Verner is not coming. The railway station. Tell Wigham to drive fast, or I shall be late."
"My lady wouldn't let Miss Decima come out in it," thought Wigham to himself, as he drove on.
CHAPTER XI.
LUCY TEMPEST.
The words of my lady, "as tall as a giantess," unconsciously influenced the imagination of Lionel Verner. The train was steaming into the station at one end as his carriage stopped at the other. Lionel leaped from it, and mingled with the bustle of the platform.
Not very much bustle, either; and it would have been less, but that Deerham Station was the nearest approach, as yet, by rail, to Heartburg, a town of some note about four miles distant. Not a single tall lady got out of the train. Not a lady at all that Lionel could see. There were two fat women, tearing about after their luggage, both habited in men's drab greatcoats, or what looked like them; and there was one very young lady, who stood back in apparent perplexity, gazing at the scene of confusion around her.
"She cannot be Miss Tempest," deliberated Lionel. "If she is, my mother must have mistaken her age; she looks but a child. No harm in asking her, at any rate."
He went up to the young lady. A very pleasant-looking girl, fair, with a peach bloom upon her cheeks, dark brown hair and eyes, soft and brown and luminous. Those eyes were wandering to all parts of the platform, some anxiety in their expression.
Lionel raised his hat.
"I beg your pardon. Have I the honour of addressing Miss Tempest?"
"Oh, yes, that is my name," she answered, looking up at him, the peach bloom deepening to a glow of satisfaction, and the soft eyes lighting with a glad smile. "Have you come to meet me?"
"I have. I come from my mother, Lady Verner."
"I am so glad," she rejoined, with a frank sincerity of manner perfectly refreshing in these modern days of artificial young ladyism. "I was beginning to think nobody had come; and then what could I have done?"
"My sister would have come with me to receive you, but for an accident which occurred to her just before it was time to start. Have you any luggage?"
"There's the great box I brought from India, and a hair-trunk, and my school-box. It is all in the van."
"Allow me to take you out of this crowd, and it shall be seen to," said Lionel, bending to offer his arm.
She took it, and turned with him; but stopped ere more than a step or two had been taken.
"We are going wrong. The luggage is up that way."
"I am taking you to the carriage. The luggage will be all right."
He was placing her in it, when she suddenly drew back and surveyed it.
"What a pretty carriage!" she exclaimed.
Many said the same of the Verner's Pride equipages. The colour of the panels was of that rich shade of blue called ultra-marine, with white linings and hammer-cloths, while a good deal of silver shone on the harness of the horses. The servants' livery was white and silver, their small-clothes blue.
Lionel handed her in.
"Have we far to go?" she asked.
"Not five minutes' drive."
He closed the door, gave the footman directions about the luggage, took his own seat by the coachman, and the carriage started. Lady Verner came to the door of the Court to receive Miss Tempest.
In the old Indian days of Lady Verner, she and Sir Lionel had been close and intimate friends of Colonel and Mrs. Tempest. Subsequently Mrs. Tempest had died, and their only daughter had been sent to a clergyman's family in England for her education—a very superior place, where six pupils only were taken. But she was of an age to leave it now, and Colonel Tempest, who contemplated soon being home, had craved of Lady Verner to receive her in the interim.
"Lionel," said his mother to him, "you must stop here for the rest of the day, and help to entertain her."
"Why, what can I do towards it?" responded Lionel.
"You can do something. You can talk. They have got Decima into her room, and I must be up and down with her. I don't like leaving Lucy alone the first day she is in the house; she will take a prejudice against it. One blessed thing, she seams quite simple—not exacting."
"Anything but exacting, I should say," replied Lionel. "I will stay for an hour or two, if you like, mother, but I must be home to dinner."
Lady Verner need not have troubled herself about "entertaining" Lucy Tempest. She was accustomed to entertain herself; and as to any ceremony or homage being paid to her, she would not have understood it, and might have felt embarrassed had it been tendered. She had not been used to anything of the sort. Could Lady Verner have seen her then, at the very moment she was talking to Lionel, her fears might have been relieved. Lucy Tempest had found her way to Decima's room, and had taken up her position in a very undignified fashion at that young lady's feet, her soft, candid brown eyes fixed upwards on Decima's face, and her tongue busy with reminiscences of India. After some time spent in this manner, she was scared away by the entrance of a gentleman whom Decima called "Jan." Upon which she proceeded to the chamber she had been shown to as hers, to dress; a process which did not appear to be very elaborate by the time it took, and then she went downstairs to find Lady Verner.
Lady Verner had not quitted Lionel. She had been grumbling and complaining all that time. It was half the pastime of Lady Verner's life to grumble in the ears of Lionel and Decima. Bitterly mortified had Lady Verner been when she found, upon her arrival from India, that Stephen Verner, her late husband's younger brother, had succeeded to Verner's Pride, to the exclusion of herself and of Lionel; and bitterly mortified she remained. Whether it had been by some strange oversight on the part of old Mr. Verner, or whether it had been intentional, no provision whatever had been left by him to Lady Verner and to her children. Stephen Verner would have remedied this. On the arrival of Lady Verner, he had proposed to pay over to her yearly a certain sum out of the estate; but Lady Verner, smarting under disappointment, under the sense of injustice, had flung his proposal back to him. Never, so long as he lived, she told Stephen Verner, passionately, would she be obliged to him for the worth of a sixpence in money or in kind. And she had kept her word.
Her