Lionel looked very much astonished.

"No!" he uttered.

"Fact!" said Jan. "The mother came to me the morning after the flitting, and said she had been seduced away. She wanted to telegraph to Dr.

West--"

Jan stopped dead, remembering that Sibylla was present, as well as Lionel. He leaped off the sofa.

"Ah, we shall see them all back some day, if they can only contrive to elude the vigilance of the Mormons. I'm off, Lionel; old Poynton will think I am not coming to-day. Good-bye, Sibylla."

Jan hastened from the room. Lionel stood at the window, and watched him away. Sibylla glided up to her husband, nestling against him.

"Lionel, tell me. Jan never would, though I nearly teased his life out; and Deborah and Amilly persisted that they knew nothing. _You_ tell me."

"Tell you what, my dearest?"

"After I came home in the winter, there were strange whispers about papa and that Chalk Cottage. People were mysterious over it, and I never could get a word of explanation. Jan was the worst; he was coolly tantalising, and it used to put me in a passion. What was the tale told?"

An involuntary darkening of Lionel's brow. He cleared it instantly, and looked down on his wife with a smile.

"I know of no tale worth telling you, Sibylla."

"But there _was_ a tale told?"

"Jan--who, being in closer proximity to Dr. West than any one, may be supposed to know best of his private affairs--tells a tale of Dr. West's having set a chimney on fire at Chalk Cottage, thereby arousing the ire of its inmates."

"Don't you repeat such nonsense to me, Lionel; you are not Jan," she returned, in a half peevish tone. "I fear papa may have borrowed money from the ladies, and did not repay them," she added, her voice sinking to a whisper. "But I would not say it to any one but you. What do you think?"

"If my wife will allow me to tell her what I think, I should say that it is her duty--and mine now--not to seek to penetrate into any affairs belonging to Dr. West which he may wish to keep to himself. Is it not so, Sibylla mine?"

Sibylla smiled, and held up her face to be kissed. "Yes, you are right, Lionel."

Swayed by impulse, more than by anything else, she thought of her treasures upstairs, in the process of dis-interment from their cases by Benoite, and ran from him to inspect them. Lionel put on his hat, and strolled out of doors.

A thought came over him that he would go and pay a visit to his mother.

He knew how exacting of attention from him she was, how jealous, so to speak, of Sibylla's having taken him from her. Lionel hoped by degrees to reduce the breach. Nothing should be wanting on his part to effect it; he trusted that nothing would be wanting on Sibylla's. He really wished to see his mother after his month's absence; and he knew she would be pleased at his going there on this, the first morning of his return. As he turned into the high road, he met the vicar of Deerham, the Reverend James Bourne.

They shook hands, and the conversation turned, not unnaturally, on the Mormon flight. As they were talking of it, Roy, the ex-bailiff, was observed crossing the opposite field.

"My brother tells me the report runs that Mrs. Roy contemplated being of the company, but was overtaken by her husband and brought back,"

remarked Lionel.

"How it may have been, about his bringing her back, or whether she actually started, I don't know," replied Mr. Bourne, who was a man with a large pale face and iron-gray hair. "That she intended to go, I have reason to believe."

He spoke the last words significantly, lowering his voice. Lionel looked at him.

"She paid me a mysterious visit at the vicarage the night before the start," continued the clergyman. "A very mysterious visit, indeed, taken in conjunction with her words. I was in my study, reading by candle-light, when somebody came tapping at the glass door, and stole in. It was Mrs. Roy. She was in a state of tremor, as I have heard it said she appeared the night the inquiry was held at Verner's Pride, touching the death of Rachel Frost. She spoke to me in ambiguous terms of a journey she was about to take--that she should probably be away for her whole life--and then she proceeded to speak of that night."

"The night of the inquiry?" echoed Lionel.

"The night of the inquiry--that is, the night of the accident," returned Mr. Bourne. "She said she wished to confide a secret to me, which she had not liked to touch upon before, but which she could not leave the place without confiding to some one responsible, who might use it in case of need. The secret she proceeded to tell me was--that it was Frederick Massingbird who had been quarrelling with Rachel that night by the Willow Pool. She could swear it to me, she said, if necessary."

"But--if that were true--why did she not proclaim it at the time?" asked Lionel, after a pause.

"It was all she said. And she would not be questioned. 'In case o' need, sir, in case anybody else should ever be brought up for it, tell 'em that Dinah Roy asserted to you with her last breath in Deerham, that Mr.

Fred Massingbird was the one that was with Rachel.' Those were the words she used to me; I dotted them down after she left. As I tell you, she would not be questioned, and glided out again almost immediately."

"Was she wandering in her mind?"

"I think not. She spoke with an air of truth. When I heard of the flight of the converts the next morning, I could only conclude that Mrs. Roy had intended to be amongst them. But now, understand me, Mr. Verner, although I have told you this, I have not mentioned it to another living soul. Neither do I intend to do so. It can do no good to reap up the sad tale; whether Frederick Massingbird was or was not with Rachel that night; whether he was in any way guilty, or was purely innocent, it boots not to inquire now."

"It does not," warmly replied Lionel. "You have done well. Let us bury Mrs. Roy's story between us, and forget it, so far as we can."

They parted. Lionel took his way to Deerham Court, absorbed in thought.

His own strong impression had been, that Mr. Fred Massingbird was the black sheep with regard to Rachel.

CHAPTER XLIII.

LIONEL'S PRAYER FOR FORGIVENESS.

Lady Verner, like many more of us, found that misfortunes do not come singly. Coeval almost with that great misfortune, Lionel's marriage--at any rate, coeval with his return to Verner's Pride with his bride--another vexation befell Lady Verner. Had Lady Verner found real misfortunes to contend with, it is hard to say how she would have borne them. Perhaps Lionel's marriage to Sibylla was a real misfortune; but this second vexation assuredly was not--at any rate to Lady Verner.

Some women--and Lady Verner was one--are fond of scheming and planning.

Whether it be the laying out of a flower-bed, or the laying out of a marriage, they must plan and project. Disappointment with regard to her own daughter--for Decima most unqualifyingly disclaimed any match-making on her own score--Lady Verner had turned her hopes in this respect on Lucy Tempest. She deemed that she should be ill-fulfilling the responsibilities of her guardianship, unless when Colonel Tempest returned to England, she could present Lucy to him a wife, or, at least, engaged to be one. Many a time now did she unavailingly wish that Lionel had chosen Lucy, instead of her whom he had chosen. Although--and mark how we estimate things by comparison--when, in the old days, Lady Verner had fancied Lionel was growing to like Lucy, she had told him emphatically it "would not do." Why would it not do? Because, in the estimation of Lady Verner, Lucy Tempest was less desirable in a social point of view than the Earl of Elmsley's daughter, and upon the latter lady had been fixed her hopes for Lionel.

All that was past and gone. Lady Verner had seen the fallacy of sublunary hopes and projects. Lady Mary Elmsley was rejected--Lionel had married in direct defiance of everybody's advice--and Lucy was open to offers. Open to offers, as Lady Verner supposed; but she was destined to find herself unpleasantly disappointed.

One came forward with an offer to her. And that was no other than the Earl of Elmsley's son, Viscount Garle. A pleasant man, of eight-and-twenty years; and he was often at Lady Verner's. He had been intimate there a long while, going in and out as unceremoniously as did Lionel or Jan. Lady Verner and Decima could tell a tale that no one else suspected. How, in the years gone by--some four or five years ago now--he had grown to love Decima with his whole heart; and Decima had rejected him. In spite of his sincere love; of the advantages of the match; of the angry indignation of Lady Verner; Decima had steadfastly rejected him. For some time Lord Garle would not take the rejection; but one day, when my lady was out, Decima spoke with him privately for five minutes, and from that hour Lord Garle had known there was no hope; had been content to begin there and then, and strive to love her only as a sister. The little episode was never known; Decima and Lady Verner had kept counsel, and Lord Garle had not told tales of himself. Next to Lionel, Lady Verner liked Lord Garle better than any one--ten times better than she liked unvarnished Jan; and he was allowed the run of the house as though he had been its son. The first year of Lucy's arrival--the year of Lionel's illness, Lord Garle had been away from the neighbourhood; but somewhere about the time of Sibylla's return, he had come back to it. Seeing a great deal of Lucy, as he necessarily did, being so much at Lady Verner's, he grew to esteem and love her. Not with the same love he had borne for Decima--a love, such as that, never comes twice in a lifetime--but with a love sufficiently warm, notwithstanding.

And he asked her to become his wife.

_There_ was triumph for Lady Verner! Next to Decima--and all hope of that was dead for ever--she would like Lord Garle to marry Lucy. A real triumph, the presenting her to Colonel Tempest on his return, my Lady Viscountess Garle! In the delight of her heart she betrayed something of this to Lucy.

"But I am not going to marry him, Lady Verner," objected Lucy.

"You are not going to marry him, Lucy? He confided to me the fact of his intention this morning before he spoke to you. He _has_ spoken to you, has he not?"

"Yes," replied Lucy; "but I cannot accept him."

"You--cannot! What are you talking of?" cried Lady Verner.

"Please not to be angry, Lady Verner! I could not marry Lord Garle."

Lady Verner's lips grew pale. "And pray why can you not?" she demanded.