soliloquy; not to Lionel. Lionel, who knew his uncle’s every mood, quitted the room. As he closed the door, a heavy groan, born of displeasure mingled with pain, like the greeting look had been, was sent after him by Mr. Verner. Very emphatically did it express his state of feeling with regard to Lionel; and Lionel felt it keenly.
Lionel Verner had remained in Paris six months, when summoned thither by the accident to his brother. The accident need not have detained him half that period of time; but the seductions of the gay French capital had charms for Lionel. From the very hour that he set foot in Verner’s Pride on his return, he found that Mr. Verner’s behaviour had altered to him. He showed bitter, angry estrangement, and Lionel could only conceive one cause for it—his long sojourn abroad. Fifteen or sixteen months had now elapsed since his return, and the estrangement had not lessened. In vain Lionel sought an explanation. Mr. Verner would not enter upon it. In fact, so far as direct words went, Mr. Verner had never expressed much of his displeasure: he left it to his manner. That said enough. He had never dropped the slightest allusion to its cause. When Lionel asked an explanation, he neither accorded nor denied it, but would put him off evasively; as he might have put off a child who asked a troublesome question: like you have now seen him do once again.
After the rebuff, Lionel was crossing the hall, when he suddenly halted, as if a thought struck him, and he turned back to the study. If ever a man’s attitude bespoke utter grief and prostration, Mr. Verner’s did, as Lionel opened the door. His head and hands had fallen, and his stick had dropped upon the carpet. He started out of his reverie at the appearance of Lionel, and made an effort to recover his stick. Lionel hastened to pick it up for him.
“I have been thinking, sir, that it might be well for Decima to go in the carriage to the station, to receive Miss Tempest. Shall I order it?”
“Order anything you like; order all Verner’s Pride—what does it matter? Better for some of us, perhaps, that it had never existed.”
Hastily, abruptly, carelessly was the answer given: there was no mistaking that Mr. Verner was nearly beside himself with mental pain.
Lionel went round to the stables, to give the order he had suggested. One great feature in the character of Lionel Verner was, its complete absence of assumption. Courteously refined in mind and feelings, he could not have presumed: others, in his position, might have deemed they were but exercising a right. Though the presumptive heir to Verner’s Pride, living in it, brought up as such, he would not, you see, even send out its master’s unused carriage, without that master’s sanction. In little things as in great, Lionel Verner could but be a thorough gentleman: to be otherwise he must have changed his nature.
“Wigham, will you take the close carriage to Deerham Court. It is wanted for Miss Verner.”
“Very well, sir.” But Wigham—who had been coachman in the family nearly as many years as Lionel had been in the world—wondered much, for all his prompt reply. He scarcely ever remembered a Verner’s Pride carriage to have been ordered for Miss Verner.
Lionel passed into the high road from Verner’s Pride, and, turning to the left, commenced his walk to Deerham. There were no roadside houses for a little way, but they soon began, by ones, by twos, and at last they grew into a consecutive street. These houses were mostly very poor; small shops, beer-houses, labourers’ cottages; but a turning to the right in the midst of the village led to a part where the houses were of a superior character, several gentlemen living there. It was a new road, called Belvedere Road; the first house in it being inhabited by Dr. West.
Lionel cast a glance across at that house as he passed down the long street. At least, as much as he could see of it, looking obliquely. His glance was not rewarded. Very frequently pretty Sibylla would be at the windows, or her vain sister Amilly. Though, if vanity is to be brought in, I don’t know where it would be found in an equal degree, as it was in Sibylla West. The windows appeared to be untenanted: and Lionel withdrew his eyes and passed straightly on his way. On his left hand was situated the shop of Mrs. Duff: its prints, its silk neckerchiefs, and its ribbons displayed in three parts of its bow-window. The fourth part was devoted to more ignominious articles, huddled indiscriminately into a corner. Children’s Dutch dolls and black-lead; penny tale-books and square pint packets of cocoa; bottles of ink and India rubber balls: side combs and papers of stationery; scented soap and Circassian cream (home made); tape, needles, pins, starch, bandoline, lavender water, baking powder, iron skewers; and a host of other articles too numerous to notice. Nothing came amiss to Mrs. Duff; she patronised everything she thought she could turn a penny by.
“Your servant, sir,” said she, dropping a curtsey as Lionel came up: for Mrs. Duff was standing at the door.
He merely nodded to her, and went on. Whether it was the sight of the woman or of some lavender prints hanging in her window, certain it was, that the image of poor Rachel Frost came vividly into the mind of Lionel. Nothing had been heard, nothing found, to clear up the mystery of that past night.
At the extremity of the village, lying a little back from it, was a moderate-sized, red brick house, standing in the midst of lands, and called Deerham Court. It had once been an extensive farm; but the present tenant, Lionel’s mother, rented the house only, very little of the land. The land was let to a neighbouring farmer. Nearly a mile beyond—you could see its towers and its chimneys from this—rose the stately old mansion, called Deerham Hall. Deerham Hall, Deerham Court, and a great deal of the land and property on that side of the village, belonged to Sir Rufus Hantley, a proud, unsociable man. He lived at the Hall: and his only son, between whom and himself it was conjectured there existed some estrangement, had purchased into an Indian regiment, where he was now serving.
Lionel Verner passed the village, branched off