most frequently professional visits, concerning nobody but Jan. Lady Verner swept in. For her very life, she could not avoid showing hauteur in that moment. Sibylla sprung from her chair, and stood with a changing face.
Lionel’s countenance, too, was changing. It was the first time he had met Lucy face to face in the close proximity necessitated by a room. He had studiously striven not to meet her, and had contrived to succeed. Did he call himself a coward for it? But where was the help?
A few moments given to greeting, to the assuming of seats, and they were settled down. Lady Verner and Decima on a sofa opposite Sibylla; Lucy in a low chair—what she was sure to look out for; Lionel leaning against the mantel-piece—as favourite a position of his, as a low seat was of Lucy’s. Sibylla had been startled by their entrance, and her chest was beating. Her brilliant colour went and came, her hand was pressed upon her bosom, as if to still it, and she lay rather back in her chair for support. She had not assumed a widow’s cap since her arrival, and her pretty hair fell around her in a shower of gold. In spite of Lady Verner’s prejudices, she could not help thinking her very beautiful; but she looked suspiciously delicate.
“It is very kind of you to come to see me,” said Sibylla, speaking timidly across to Lady Verner.
Lady Verner slightly bowed.
“You do not look strong,” she observed to Sibylla, speaking in the moment’s impulse. “Are you well?”
“I am pretty well. I am not strong. Since I returned home, a little thing seems to flutter me, as your entrance has done now. Lionel had just told me you would call upon me, he thought. I was so glad to hear it! Somehow I had feared you would not.”
Candid, at any rate; and Lady Verner did not disapprove the apparent feeling that prompted it: but how her heart revolted at hearing those lips pronounce “Lionel” familiarly, she alone could tell. Again came the offence.
“Lionel tells me sometimes I am so changed since I went out, that even he would scarcely have known me. I do not think I am so changed as all that. I had a good deal of vexation and trouble, and I grew thin. But I shall soon be well again now.”
A pause.
“You ascertained no certain news of John Massingbird, I hear?” observed Lady Verner.
“Not any. A gentleman there is endeavouring to trace out more particulars. I heard—did Lionel mention to you—that I heard, strange to say, of Luke Roy from the family I was visiting—the Eyres? Lionel,”—turning to him—“did you repeat it to Lady Verner?”
“I believe not,” replied Lionel.
He could not say to Sibylla, “My mother would tolerate no conversation on any topic connected with you.”
Another flagging pause.
Lionel, to create a divertissement, raised a remarkably fine specimen of coral from the table, and carried it to his mother.
“It is beautiful,” he remarked. “Sibylla brought it home with her.”
Lady Verner allowed that it was beautiful.
“Show it to Lucy,” she said, when she had examined it with interest. “Lucy, my dear, do you remember what I was telling you the other evening, about the black coral?”
Sibylla rose and approached Lucy with Lionel.
“I am so pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said, warmly. “You only came to Deerham a short while before I was leaving it, and I saw scarcely anything of you. Lionel has seen a great deal of you, I fancy, though he will not speak of you. I told him one day it looked suspicious; that I should be jealous of you, if he did not mind.”
It was a foolish speech, foolish of Sibylla to utter it: but she did so in all singleness of heart, meaning nothing. Lucy was bending over the coral, held by Lionel. She felt her own cheeks flush, and she saw by chance, not by direct look, that Lionel’s face had turned a deep scarlet. Jealous of her! She continued to admire the coral some little time longer, and then resigned it to him with a smile.
“Thank you, Mr. Verner. I am fond of these marine curiosities. We had a good many of them at the Rectory. Mr. Cust’s brother was a sailor.
Lionel could not remember the time when she had called him “Mr. Verner.” It was right, however, that she should do so; but in his heart he felt thankful for that sweet smile. It seemed to tell him that she, at any rate, was heart whole, that she certainly bore him no resentment. He spoke, himself, freely now.
“You are not looking well, Lucy—as we have been upon the subject of looks.”
“I? Oh, I have had another cold since the one Jan cured. I did not try his remedies in time, and it fastened upon me. I don’t know which barked the most—I, or Growler.”
“Jan says he shall have Growler here,” remarked Sibylla.
“No, Sibylla,” interposed Lionel; “Jan said he should like to have Growler here if it were convenient to do so, and my mother would spare him. A medical man’s is not the place for a barking dog: he might attack the night applicants.”
“Is it Jan’s dog?” inquired Lucy.
“Yes,” said Lionel. “I thought you knew it. Why, don’t you remember, Lucy, the day I—”
Whatever reminiscence Lionel may have been about to recal, he cut it short midway, and subsided into silence. What was his motive? Did Lucy know? She did not ask for the ending, and the rest were then occupied, and had not heard.
More awkward pauses—as in these visits where the parties do not amalgamate, is sure to be the case, and then Lady Verner slightly bowed to Lucy, as she might have done on their retiring from table, and rose. Extending the tips of her delicately-gloved fingers to Sibylla, she swept out of the room. Decima shook hands with her more cordially, although she had not spoken half-a-dozen words during the interview, and Sibylla turned and put her hand into Lucy’s.
“I hope we shall be intimate friends,” she said.