Verner's Pride. Mrs. Henry Wood
to her forehead. "I will not permit it, Lionel."
Lionel could not avoid laughing.
"What can have put such a thing in your head, mother, I am at a loss to conceive. Certainly nothing in my conduct has induced it. I have talked to Lucy as a child, more than as anything else; I have scarcely thought of her but as one—"
"Lucy is not a child," interrupted Lady Verner.
"In years I find she is not. When I first saw her at the railway-station, I thought she was a child, and the impression somehow remains upon my mind. Too often I talk to her as one. As to anything else—were I to marry to-morrow, it is not Lucy Tempest I should make my wife."
The first glad look that Lionel had seen on Lady Verner's face for many a day came over it then. In her own mind she had been weaving a pretty little romance for Lionel; and it was her dread, lest that romance should be interfered with, which had called up her fears, touching Lucy Tempest.
"My darling Lionel, you know where you might go and choose a wife," she said. "I have long wished that you would do it. Beauty, rank, wealth—you may win them for the asking."
A slightly self-conscious smile crossed the lips of Lionel.
"You are surely not going to introduce again that nonsense about Mary Elmsley!" he exclaimed. "I should never like her, never marry her, therefore—"
"Did you not allude to her when you spoke but now—that it was not Lucy Tempest you should make your wife?"
"No."
"To whom, then? Lionel, I must know it."
Lionel's cheek flushed scarlet. "I am not going to marry yet—I have no intention of it. Why should this conversation have arisen?"
The words seemed to arouse a sudden dread on the part of Lady Verner. "Lionel," she gasped in a low tone, "there is a dreadful fear coming over me. Not Lady Mary! Some one else! I remember Decima said one day that you appeared to care more for Sibylla West than for her, your sister. I have never thought of it from that hour to this. I paid no more attention to it than though she had said you cared for my maid Thérèse. You cannot care for Sibylla West!"
Lionel had high notions of duty as well as of honour, and he would not equivocate to his mother. "I do care very much for Sibylla West," he said in a low tone; "and, please God, I hope she will sometime be my wife. But, mother, this confidence is entirely between ourselves. I beg you not to speak of it; it must not be suffered to get abroad."
The one short sentence of avowal over, Lionel might as well have talked to the moon. Lady Verner heard him not. She was horrified. The Wests in her eyes were utterly despicable. Dr. West was tolerated as her doctor; but as nothing else. Her brave Lionel—standing there before her in all the pride of his strength and his beauty—he sacrifice himself to Sibylla West! Of the two, Thérèse might have been the less dreadful to the mind of Lady Verner.
A quarrel ensued. Stay—that is a wrong word. It was not a quarrel, for Lady Verner had all the talking, and Lionel would not respond angrily; he kept his lips pressed together lest he should. Never had Lady Verner been moved to make a like scene. She reproached, she sobbed, she entreated. And, in the midst of it, in walked Decima and Lucy Tempest.
Lady Verner for once forgot herself. She forgot that Lucy was a stranger; she forgot the request of Lionel for silence; and, upon Decima's asking what was amiss, she told all—that Lionel loved Sibylla West, and meant to marry her.
Decima was too shocked to speak. Lucy turned and looked at Lionel, a pleasant smile shining in her eyes. "She is very pretty; very, very pretty; I never saw any one prettier."
"Thank you, Lucy," he cordially said; and it was the first time he had called her Lucy.
Decima went up to her brother. "Lionel, must it be? I do not like her."
"Decima, I fear that you and my mother are both prejudiced," he somewhat haughtily answered. And there he stopped. In turning his eyes towards his mother as he spoke of her, he saw that she had fainted away.
Jan was sent for, in all haste. Dr. West was Lady Verner's medical adviser; but a feeling in Decima's heart at the moment prevented her summoning him. Jan arrived, on the run; the servant had told him she was not sure but her lady was dying.
Lady Verner had revived then; was better; and was re-entering upon the grievance which had so affected her. "What could it have been?" wondered Jan, who knew his mother was not subject to fainting fits.
"Ask your brother, there, what it was," resentfully spoke Lady Verner. "He told me he was going to marry Sibylla West."
"Law!" uttered Jan.
Lionel stood; haughty, impassive; his lips curling, his figure drawn to its full height. He would not reproach his mother by so much as a word, but the course she was taking, in thus proclaiming his affairs to the world, hurt him in no measured degree.
"I don't like her," said Jan. "Deborah and Amilly are not much, but I'd rather have the two, than Sibylla."
"Jan," said Lionel, suppressing his temper, "your opinion was not asked."
Jan sat down on the arm of the sofa, his great legs dangling. "Sibylla can't marry two," said he.
"Will you be quiet, Jan?" said Lionel. "You have no right to interfere. You shall not interfere."
"Gracious, Lionel, I don't want to interfere," returned Jan simply. "Sibylla's going to marry Fred Massingbird."
"Will you be quiet?" reiterated Lionel, his brow flushing scarlet.
"I'll be quiet," said Jan, with composure. "You can go and ask her for yourself. It has all been settled this afternoon; not ten minutes ago. Fred's going out to Australia, and Sibylla's going with him, and Deborah and Amilly are crying their eyes out, at the thought of parting with her."
Lady Verner looked up at Jan, an expression of eager hope on her face. She could have kissed him a thousand times. Lionel—Lionel took his hat and walked out.
Believing it? No. The temptation to chastise Jan was growing great, and he deemed it well to remove himself out of it. Jan was right, however.
Much to the surprise of Frederick Massingbird, very much to the surprise of Sibylla, Dr. West not only gave his consent to the marriage as soon as asked, but urged it on. If Fred must depart in a week, why, they could be married in a week, he said. Sibylla was thunderstruck: Miss Deborah and Miss Amilly gave vent to a few hysterical shrieks, and hinted about the wedding clothes and the outfit. That could be got together in a day, was the reply of Dr. West, and they were too much astonished to venture to say it could not.
"You told me to wait for Lionel Verner," whispered Sibylla, when she and her father were alone, as she stood before him, trembling. In her mind's eye she saw Verner's Pride slipping from her; and it gave her chagrin, in spite of her love for Fred Massingbird.
Dr. West leaned forward and whispered a few words in her ear. She started violently, she coloured crimson. "Papa!"
"It is true," nodded the doctor.
As Lionel passed the house on his way from Deerham Court to Verner's Pride, he turned into it, led by a powerful impulse. He did not believe Jan, but the words had made him feel twitchings of uneasiness. Fred Massingbird had gone then, and the doctor was out. Lionel looked into the drawing-room, and there found the two elder Misses West, each dissolved in a copious shower of tears. So far, Jan's words were borne out. A sharp spasm shot across his heart.
"You are in grief," he said, advancing to them. "What is the cause?"
"The most dreadful voyage for her!" ejaculated Miss Deborah. "The ship may go to the bottom before it gets there."
"And not so much as time to think of proper things for her, let alone getting them!" sobbed Miss Amilly. "It's all a confused mass in my mind together—bonnets, and gowns, and veils, and wreaths, and trunks, and petticoats, and calico things