clearing the shop of guests and marshalling the saint himself to the retirement of his own apartment. However contrite he may have shown himself for this the next morning, nobody desired to have the scene repeated. Consequently, when Peckaby now entered, defiance in his face and unsteadiness in his legs, the guests filed out of their own accord; and Brother Jarrum, taking the flaring candle from the shelf, disappeared with it up the stairs.
This has been a very fair specimen of Brother Jarrum’s representations and eloquence. It was only one meeting out of a great many. As I said before, the precise tenets of his religious faith need not be enlarged upon: it is enough to say that they were quite equal to his temporal promises. You will therefore scarcely wonder that he made disciples. But the mischief, as yet, had only begun to brew.
CHAPTER XXVIII. A VISIT OF CEREMONY.
Whatever may have been Lionel Verner’s private sentiments, with regard to his choice of a wife,—whether he repented his hasty bargain or whether he did not, no shade of dissatisfaction escaped him. Sibylla took up her abode with her sisters, and Lionel visited her, just as other people visit the young ladies they may be going to marry. The servants at Verner’s Pride were informed that a mistress for them was in contemplation, and preparations for the marriage were begun. Not until summer would it take place, when twelve months should have elapsed from the demise of Frederick Massingbird.
Deerham was, of course, free in its comments, differing in no wise on that score from other places. Lionel Verner was pitied, and Sibylla abused. The heir of Verner’s Pride, with his good looks, his manifold attractions, his somewhat cold impassibility as to the tempting snares laid out for him in the way of matrimony, had been a beacon for many a young lady to steer towards. Had he married Lucy Tempest, had he married Lady Mary Elmsley, had he married a royal princess, he and she would both have been equally cavilled at. He, for placing himself beyond the pale of competition; she, for securing the prize. It always was so, and it always will be.
His choice of Mrs. Massingbird, however, really did afford some grounds for grumbling. She was not worthy of Lionel Verner. So Deerham thought; so Deerham said. He was throwing himself away; he would live to repent it; she must have been the most crafty of women, so to have secured him! Free words enough, and harshly spoken: but they were as water by the side of those uttered by Lady Verner.
In the first bitter hour of disappointment, Lady Verner gave free speech to harsh things. It was in her love for Lionel that she so grieved. Setting aside the facts that Sibylla had been the wife of another man, that she was, in position, beneath Lionel—which facts, however, Lady Verner could not set aside, for they were ever present to her—her great objection lay in the conviction that Sibylla would prove entirely unsuited to him; that it would turn out an unhappy union. Short and sharp was the storm with Lady Verner: but in a week or two she subsided into quietness, buried her grief and resentment within her, and made no further outward demonstration.
“Mother, you will call upon Sibylla?” Lionel said to her one day that he had gone to Deerham Court. He spoke in a low deprecating tone, and his face flushed: he anticipated he knew not what torrent of objection.
Lady Verner met the request differently.
“I suppose it will be expected of me, that I should do so,” she replied, strangely calm. “How I dislike this artificial state of things! Where the customs of society must be bowed to, by those who live in it: their actions, good or bad, commented upon and judged! You have been expecting that I should call before this, I suppose, Lionel?”
“I have been hoping, from day to day, that you would call.”
“I will call—for your sake. Lionel,” she passionately added, turning to him, and seizing his hands between hers, “what I do now, I do for your sake. It has been a cruel blow to me: but I will try to make the best of it, for you, my best-loved son.”
He bent down to his mother, and kissed her tenderly. It was his mode of showing her his thanks.
“Do not mistake me, Lionel. I will go just so far in this matter as may be necessary to avoid open disapproval. If I appear to approve it, that the world may not cavil and you complain, it will be little more than an appearance. I will call upon your intended wife, but the call will be one of etiquette, of formal ceremony: you must not expect me to get into the habit of repeating it. I shall never become intimate with her.”
“You do not know what the future may bring forth,” returned Lionel, looking at his mother with a smile. “I trust the time will come when you shall have learnt to love Sibylla.”
“I do not think that time will ever arrive,” was the frigid reply of Lady Verner. “Oh, Lionel!” she added, in an impulse of sorrow, “what a barrier this has raised between us—what a severing for the future!”
“The barrier exists in your own mind only, mother,” was his answer, spoken sadly. “Sibylla would be a loving daughter to you, if you would allow her so to be.”
A slight, haughty shake of the head, suppressed at once, was the reply of Lady Verner. “I had looked for a different daughter,” she continued. “I had hoped for Mary Elmsley.”
“Upon this point, at any rate, there need be no misunderstanding,” returned Lionel. “Believe me once for all, mother: I should never have married Mary Elmsley. Had I and Sibylla remained apart for life, separated as wide as the two poles, it is not Mary Elmsley that I should have made my wife. It is more than probable that my choice would have pleased you only in a degree more than it does now.”
The jealous ears of Lady Verner detected an under-current of meaning in the words.
“You speak just as though you had some one in particular in your thoughts!” she uttered.
