self the pleasant manner changed to one of constraint.
“Say what you have to say, Mrs. Duff.”
“Well, sir—but I’m sure I beg a hundred thousand pardings for mentioning of it—it’s about the bill,” she answered, lowering her voice. “If I could be paid, sir, it ’ud be the greatest help to me. I don’t know hardly how to keep on.”
No revelation touching the ghost could have given Lionel the surprise imparted by these ambiguous words. But his constraint was gone.
“I do not understand you, Mrs. Duff. What bill?”
“The bill what’s owing to me, sir, from Verner’s Pride. It’s a large sum for me, sir,—thirty-two pound odd. I have to keep up my payments for my goods, sir, whether or not, or I should be a bankrupt to-morrow. Things is hard upon me just now, sir: though I don’t want everybody to know it. There’s that big son o’ mine, Dick, out o’ work. If I could have the bill, or only part of it, it ’ud be like a God-send.”
“Who owes you the bill?” asked Lionel.
“It’s your good lady, sir, Mrs. Verner.”
“Who?” echoed Lionel, his accent quite a sharp one.
“Mrs. Verner, sir.”
Lionel stood gazing at the woman. He could not take in the information: he believed there must be some mistake.
“It were for things supplied between the time Mrs. Verner came home after your marriage, sir, and when she went to London in the spring. The French Madmizel, sir, came down and ordered some on ’em; and Mrs. Verner herself, sir, ordered others.”
Lionel looked around the shop. He did not disbelieve the woman’s words, but he was in a maze of astonishment. Perhaps a doubt of the Frenchwoman crossed his mind.
“There’s nothing here that Mrs. Verner would wear!” he exclaimed.
“There’s many odds and ends of things here, sir, as is useful to a lady’s tilette—and you’d be surprised, sir, to find how such things mounts up when they be had continual. But the chief part o’ the bill, sir, is for two silk gownds as was had off our traveller. Mrs. Verner, sir, she happened to be here when he called in one day last winter, and she saw his patterns, and she chose two dresses, and said she’d buy ’em of me if I ordered ’em. Which in course I did, sir, and paid for ’em, and sent ’em up. I saw her wear ’em both, sir, after they was made up, and very nice they looked.”
Lionel had heard quite enough.
“Where is the bill?” he inquired.
“It have been sent in, sir, long ago. When I found Mrs. Verner didn’t pay it afore she went away, I made bold to write and ask her. Miss West she give me the address in London, and said she wished she could pay me herself. I didn’t get a answer, sir, and I made bold to write again, and I never got one then. Twice I have been up to Verner’s Pride, sir, since you come home this time, but I can’t get to see Mrs. Verner. That French Madmizel’s one o’ the best I ever see at putting folks off. Sir, it goes again the grain to trouble you; and if I could have got to see Mrs. Verner, I never would have said a word. Perhaps if you’d be so good as to tell her, sir, how hard I’m put to it, she’d send me a little.”
“I am sure she will,” said Lionel. “You shall have your money to-day, Mrs. Duff.”
He turned out of the shop, a scarlet spot of emotion on his cheek. Thirty-two pounds owing to poor Mrs. Duff! Was it thoughtlessness on Sibylla’s part? He strove to beat down the conviction that it was a less excusable error.
But the Verner pride had been wounded to its very core.
CHAPTER XL. A LIFE HOVERING IN THE BALANCE.
Gathered before a target on the lawn, in their archery costume gleaming with green and gold, was a fair group, shooting their arrows in the air. Far more went into the air than struck the target. They were the visitors of Verner’s Pride: and Sibylla, the hostess, was the gayest, the merriest, the fairest among them.
Lionel came on to the terrace, descended the steps, and crossed the lawn to join them: as courtly, as apparently gay, as if that bill of Mrs. Duff’s was not making havoc of his heartstrings. They all ran to surround him: it was not often they had so attractive a host to surround: and attractive men are, and always will be, welcome to women. A few minutes, a quarter of an hour given to them, an unruffled smoothness on his brow, a smile upon his lips, and then he contrived to draw his wife aside.
“Oh, Lionel, I forgot to tell you,” she exclaimed. “Poynton has been here. He knows of the most charming pair of grey ponies, he says. And they can be ours if secured at once.”
“I don’t want grey ponies,” replied Lionel.
“But I do,” cried Sibylla. “You say I am too timid to drive. It is all nonsense; I should soon get over the timidity. I will learn to drive, Lionel. Mrs. Jocelyn, come here,” she called out.
Mrs. Jocelyn, a young and pretty woman, almost as pretty as Sibylla, answered to the summons.
“Tell Mr. Verner what Poynton said about the ponies.”
“Oh, you must not miss the opportunity,” cried Mrs. Jocelyn to Lionel. “They are perfectly beautiful, the man said. Very dear, of course; but you know nobody looks at money when buying horses for a lady. Mrs. Verner must have them. You might secure them to-day.”<-- see list of hyphenated words -->
“I have no room in my stables for more horses,” said Lionel, smiling at Mrs. Jocelyn’s eagerness.
“Yes you have, Lionel,” interposed his wife, “or room must be made. I have ordered the ponies to be brought.”
“I shall send them back,” said Lionel laughing.
“Don’t you wish your wife to take to driving, Mr. Verner? Don’t you like to see a lady drive? Some don’t.”
“I think there is no necessity for a lady to