"Lucy proposed to give it up to you," said Decima. "It is the largest room we have; the only one that has a dressing-room opening from it, except mamma's. Lucy has gone to the small room at the end of the corridor."

"But it is not right for us to turn out Lucy," debated Lionel. "I do not like the idea of it."

"It was Lucy herself who first thought of it, Lionel. I am sure she is glad to do anything she can to render you and Mrs. Verner comfortable.

She has been quite anxious to make it look nice, and moved nearly all the things herself."

"It does look comfortable," acquiesced Lionel as he stood before the blaze of the fire, feeling grateful to Decima, to his mother, to Lucy, to all of them. "Sibylla, this is one of your fires; yea like a blaze."

"And Catherine will wait upon you, Mrs. Verner," continued Decima. "She understands it. She waited on mamma for two years before Therese came.

Should you require your hair done, Therese will do that; mamma thinks Catherine would not make any hand at it."

She quitted the room as she spoke, and closed the door, saying that she would send up Catherine then. Lionel had his eyes fixed on the room and its furniture; it was really an excellent room--spacious, lofty, and fitted up with every regard to comfort as well as to appearance. In the old days it was Jan's room, and Lionel scarcely remembered to have been inside it since; but it looked very superior now to what it used to look then. Lady Verner had never troubled herself to improvise superfluous decorations for Jan. Lionel's chief attention was riveted on the bed, an Arabian, handsomely carved, mahogany bed, with white muslin hangings, lined with pink, matching with the window-curtains. The hangings were new; but he felt certain that the bed was the one hitherto used by his mother.

He stepped into the dressing-room, feeling more than he could have expressed, feeling that he could never repay all the kindness they seemed to be receiving. Equally inviting looked the dressing-room. The first thing that caught Lionel's eye were some delicate paintings on the walls, done by Decima.

His gaze and his ruminations were interrupted. Violent sobs had struck on his ear from the bed-chamber; he hastened back, and found Sibylla extended at full length on the sofa, crying.

"It is such a dreadful change after Verner's Pride!" she querulously complained. "It's not half as nice as it was there! Just this old bedroom and a mess of a dressing-room, and nothing else! And only that stupid Catherine to wait upon me!"

It _was_ ungrateful. Lionel's heart, in its impulse, resented it as such. But, ever considerate for his wife, ever wishing, in the line of conduct he had laid down for himself, to find excuses for her, he reflected the next moment that it _was_ a grievous thing to be turned from a home as she had been. He leaned over her; not answering as he might have answered, that the rooms were all that could be wished, and far superior they, and all other arrangements made for them, to anything enjoyed by Sibylla until she had entered upon Verner's Pride; but he took her hand in his, and smoothed the hair from her brow, and softly whispered--

"Make the best of it, Sibylla, for my sake."

"There's no 'best' to be made," she replied, with a shower of tears, as she pushed his hand and his face away.

Catherine knocked at the door. Miss Decima had sent her and bade her say that dinner was on the point of being served. Sibylla sprang up from the sofa, and dried her tears.

"I wonder whether I can get at my gold combs?" cried she, all her grief flying away.

Lionel turned to Catherine; an active little woman with a high colour and a sensible countenance, looking much younger than her real age.

_That_ was not far off fifty; but in movement and lissomeness, she was young as she had been at twenty. Nothing vexed Catherine so much as for Lady Verner to allude to her "age." Not from any notions of vanity, but lest she might be thought growing incapable of her work.

"Catherine, is not that my mother's bed?"

"To think that you should have found it out, Mr. Lionel!" echoed Catherine, with a broad smile. "Well, sir, it is, and that's the truth.

We have been making all sorts of changes. Miss Lucy's bed has gone in for my lady, and my lady's has been brought here. See, what a big, wide bed it is!" she exclaimed, putting her arm on the counterpane. "Miss Lucy's was a good-sized bed, but my lady thought it would be hardly big enough for two; so she said hers should come in here."

"And what's Miss Lucy sleeping on?" asked Lionel, amused. "The boards?"

Catherine laughed. "Miss Lucy has got a small bed now, sir. Not, upon my word, that I think she'd mind if we did put her on the boards. She is the sweetest young lady to have to do with, Mr. Lionel! I don't believe there ever was one like her. She's as easy satisfied as ever Mr. Jan was."

"Lionel! I can't find my gold combs!" exclaimed Sibylla, coming from the dressing-room, with a face of consternation. "They are not in the dressing-case. How am I to know which box Benoite has put them in?"

"Never mind looking for the combs now," he answered. "You will have time to search for things to-morrow. Your hair looks nice without combs. _I_ think nicer than with them."

"But I wanted to wear them," she fractiously answered. "It is all your fault! You should not have forced me to discharge Benoite."

Did she wish him to look for the gold combs? Lionel did not take the hint. Leaving her in the hands of Catherine, he quitted the room.

CHAPTER LXXI.

UNPREMEDITATED WORDS.

Lucy was in the drawing-room alone when Lionel entered it. "Lady Verner," she said to him, "has stepped out to speak to Jan."

"Lucy, I find that our coming here has turned you out of your room," he gravely said. "I should earnestly have protested against it, had I known what was going to be done."

"Should you?" said she, shaking her head quite saucily. "We should not have listened to you."

"We! Whom does the 'we' include?"

"Myself and Decima. We planned everything. I like the room I have now, quite as much as that. It is the room at the end, opposite the one Mrs.

Verner is to have for her sitting-room."

"The sitting-room again! What shall you and Decima do without it?"

exclaimed Lionel, looking as he felt--vexed.

"If we never have anything worse to put up with than the loss of a sitting-room that was nearly superfluous, we shall not grieve," answered Lucy, with a smile. "How did we do without it before--when you were getting better from that long illness? We had to do without it then."

"I think not, Lucy. So far as _my_ memory serves me, you were sitting in it a great portion of your time--cheering me. I have not forgotten it, if you have."

Neither had she--by her heightened colour.

"I mean that we had to do without it for our own purposes, our drawings and our work. It is but a little matter, after all. I wish we could do more for you and Mrs. Verner. I wish," she added, her voice betraying her emotion, "that we could have prevented your being turned from Verner's Pride."

"Ay," he said, speaking with affected carelessness, and turning about an ornament in his fingers, which he had taken from the mantel-piece, "it is not an every-day calamity."

"What shall you do?" asked Lucy, going a little nearer to him, and dropping her voice to a tone of confidence.

"Do? In what way, Lucy?"

"Shall you be content to live on here with Lady Verner? Not seeking to retrieve your--your position in any way?"

"My living on here, Lucy, will be out of the question. That would never do, for more reasons than one."

Did Lucy Tempest divine what one of these reasons might be? She did not intend to look at him, but she caught his eyes in the pier-glass. Lionel smiled.

"I am thinking what a trouble you must find me--you and Decima."

She did not speak at first. Then she went quite close to him, her earnest, sympathising eyes cast up to his.

"If you please, you need not pretend to make light of it to me," she whispered. "I don't like you to think that I do not know all you must feel, and what a blow it is. I think I feel it quite as much as you can do--for your sake and for Mrs. Verner's. I lie awake at night, thinking of it; but I do not say so to Decima and Lady Verner. I make light of it to them, as you are making light of it to me."

"I know, I know!" he uttered in a tone that would have been a passionate one, but for its wailing despair. "My whole life, for a long while, has been one long scene of acting--to you. I dare not make it otherwise.

There's no remedy for it."