"Is it?" cried Decima.

Jan nodded.

"I met the postman as I was coming out, and he told me. I suppose there'll be news from Fred and Sibylla."

After this little item of information, which called the colour into Lucy's cheek--she best knew why--but which Lionel appeared to listen to impassively, Jan got off the table--

"Good-bye, Lionel," said he, holding out his hand.

"What's your hurry, Jan?" asked Lionel.

"Ask my patients," responded Jan, "I am off the first thing to Mrs.

Verner, and then shall take my round. I wish you luck, Lionel."

"Thank you, Jan," said Lionel. "Nothing less than the woolsack, of course."

"My gracious!" said literal Jan. "I say, Lionel, I'd not count upon that. If only one in a thousand gets to the woolsack, and all the lot expect it, what an amount of heart-burning must be wasted."

"Right, Jan. Only let me lead my circuit and I shall deem myself lucky."

"How long will it take you before you can accomplish that?" asked Jan.

"Twenty years?"

A shade crossed Lionel's countenance. That he was beginning late in life, none knew better than he. Jan bade him farewell, and departed for Verner's Pride.

Lady Verner was down before Lionel went. He intended to take the quarter-past ten o'clock train.

"When are we to meet again?" she asked, holding her hand in his.

"I will come home to see you soon, mother."

"Soon! I don't like the vague word," returned Lady Verner. "Why cannot you come for Christmas?"

"Christmas! I shall scarcely have gone."

"You will come, Lionel?"

"Very well, mother. As you wish it, I will."

A crimson flush--a flush of joy--rose to Lucy's countenance. Lionel happened to have glanced at her. I wonder what he thought of it!

His luggage had gone on, and he walked with a hasty step to the station. The train came in two minutes after he reached it. Lionel took his ticket, and stepped into a first-class carriage.

All was ready. The whistle sounded, and the guard had one foot on his van-step, when a shouting and commotion was heard. "Stop! Stop!" Lionel, like others, looked out, and beheld the long legs of his brother Jan come flying along the platform. Before Lionel had well known what was the matter, or had gathered in the hasty news, Jan had pulled him out of the carriage, and the train went shrieking on without him.

"There goes my luggage, and here am I and my ticket!" cried Lionel. "You have done a pretty thing, Jan. _What_ do you say?"

"It's all true, Lionel. She was crying over the letters when I got there. And pretty well I have raced back to stop your journey. Of course you will not go away now. He's dead."

"I don't understand yet," gasped Lionel, feeling, however, that he did understand.

"Not understand," repeated Jan. "It's easy enough. Fred Massingbird's dead, poor fellow; he died of fever three weeks after they landed; and you are master of Verner's Pride."

CHAPTER XXX.

NEWS FROM AUSTRALIA.

Lionel Verner could scarcely believe in his own identity. The train, which was to have contained him, was whirling towards London; he, a poor aspirant for future fortune, ought to have been in it; he had counted most certainly to be in it; but here was he, while the steam of that train yet snorted in his ears, walking out of the station, a wealthy man, come into a proud inheritance, the inheritance of his fathers. In the first moment of tumultuous thought, Lionel almost felt as if some fairy must have been at work with a magic wand.

It was all true. He linked his arm within Jan's, and listened to the recital in detail. Jan had found Mrs. Verner, on his arrival at Verner's Pride, weeping over letters from Australia; one from a Captain Cannonby, one from Sibylla. They contained the tidings that Frederick Massingbird had died of fever, and that Sibylla was anxious to come home again.

"Who is Captain Cannonby?" asked Lionel of Jan.

"Have you forgotten the name?" returned Jan. "That friend of Fred Massingbird's who sold out, and was knocking about London; Fred went up once or twice to see him. He went to the diggings last autumn, and it seems Fred and Sibylla lighted on him at Melbourne. He had laid poor Fred in the grave the day before he wrote, he says."

"I can scarcely believe it all now, Jan," said Lionel. "What a change!"

"Ay. You won't believe it for a day or two. I say, Lionel, Uncle Stephen need not have left Verner's Pride to the Massingbirds; they have not lived to enjoy it. Neither need there have been all that bother about the codicil. I know what."

"What?" asked Lionel, looking at him; for Jan spoke significantly.

"That Madam Sibylla would give her two ears now to have married you, instead of Fred Massingbird."

Lionel's face flushed, and he replied coldly, hauteur in his tone, "Nonsense, Jan! you are speaking most unwarrantably. When Sibylla chose Fred Massingbird, I was the heir to Verner's Pride."

"_I_ know," said Jan. "Verner's Pride would be a great temptation to Sibylla; and I can but think she knew it was left to Fred when she married him."

Lionel did not condescend to retort. He would as soon believe himself capable of bowing down before the god of gold, in a mean spirit, as believe Sibylla capable of it. Indeed, though he was wont to charm himself with the flattering notion that his love for Sibylla had died out, or near upon it, he was very far off the point when he could think any ill of Sibylla.

"My patients will be foaming," remarked Jan, who continued his way to Verner's Pride with Lionel. "They will conclude I have gone off with Dr.

West; and I have his list on my hands now, as well as my own. I say, Lionel, when I told you the letters from Australia were in, how little we guessed they would contain this news."

"Little, indeed!" said Lionel.

"I suppose you won't go to London now?"

"I suppose not," was the reply of Lionel; and a rush of gladness illumined his heart as he spoke it. No more toil over those dry old law books! The study had never been to his taste.

The servants were gathered in the hall when Lionel and Jan entered it.

Decorously sorry, of course, for the tidings which had arrived, but unable to conceal the inward satisfaction which peeped out--not satisfaction at the death of Fred, but at the accession of Lionel. It is curious to observe how jealous the old retainers of a family are, upon all points which touch the honour or the well-being of the house. Fred Massingbird was an alien; Lionel was a Verner; and now, as Lionel entered, they formed into a double line that he might pass between them, their master from henceforth.

Mrs. Verner was in the old place, the study. Jan had seen her in bed that morning; but, since then, she had risen. Early as the hour yet was, recent as the sad news had been, Mrs. Verner had dropped asleep. She sat nodding in her chair, snoring heavily, breathing painfully, her neck and face all one colour--carmine red. That she looked--as Jan had observed--a very apoplectic subject, struck Lionel most particularly on this morning.

"Why don't you bleed her, Jan?" he whispered.