"It is about Lucy Tempest. Here she is, upon my hands, and of course I am responsible. She has no mother, and I am responsible to Colonel Tempest and to my own conscience for her welfare. She will soon be twenty years of age--though I am sure nobody would believe it, to look at her--and it is time that her settlement in life should, at all events, be thought of. But now, look how things turn out! Lord Garle--than whom a better _parti_ could not be wished--has fallen in love with her. He made her an offer yesterday, and she won't have him."

"Indeed!" replied Lionel, constrained to say something, but wishing Lady Verner would entertain him with any other topic.

"We had quite a scene here yesterday. Indeed, it has been renewed this morning, and your coming in interrupted it. I tell her that she must have him: at any rate, must take time to consider the advantages of the offer. She obstinately protests that she will not. I cannot think what can be her motive for rejection; almost any girl in the county would jump at Lord Garle."

"I suppose so," returned Lionel, pulling at a hole in his glove.

"I must get you to speak to her, Lionel. Ask her why she declines. Show her--"

"I speak to her!" interrupted Lionel in a startled tone. "I cannot speak to her about it, mother. It is no business of mine."

"Good heavens, Lionel! are _you_ going to turn disobedient?--And in so trifling-a matter as this!--trifling so far as you are concerned. Were it of vital importance to you, you might run counter to me; it is only what I should expect."

This was a stab at his marriage. Lionel replied by disclaiming any influence over Miss Tempest. "Where your arguments have failed, mine would not be likely to succeed."

"Then you are mistaken, Lionel. I am certain that you hold a very great influence over Lucy. I observed it first when you were ill, when she and Decima were so much with you. She has betrayed it in a hundred little ways; her opinions are formed upon yours; your tastes unconsciously bias hers. It is only natural. She has no brother, and no doubt has learned to regard you as one."

Lionel hoped in his inmost heart that she did regard him only as a brother. Lady Verner continued--

"A word from you may have great effect upon her; and I desire, Lionel, that you will, in your duty to me, undertake that word. Point out to her the advantages of the match; tell her that you speak to her as her father; urge her to accept Lord Garle; or, as I say, not to summarily reject him without consideration, upon the childish plea that she 'does not like him.' She was terribly agitated last night; nearly went into hysterics, Decima tells me, after I left her; all her burden being that she wished she could go away to India."

"Mother--you know how pleased I should be to obey any wish of yours; but this is really not a proper business for me to interfere with," urged Lionel, a red spot upon his cheek.

"Why is it not?" pointedly asked Lady Verner, looking hard at him and waiting for an answer.

"I do not deem it to be so. Neither would Lucy consider my interference justifiable."

"But, Lionel, you take up wrong notions! I wish you to speak in my place, just as if you were her father; in short, acting for her father.

As to what Lucy may consider or not consider in the matter, that is of very little consequence. Lucy is so perfectly unsophisticated, so simple in her ideas, that were I to desire my maid Therese to give her a lecture, she would receive it as something proper."

"I should be most unwilling to----"

"Hold your tongue, Lionel. You must do it. Here she is."

"I could not find Decima, Lady Verner," said Lucy, entering. "When I had been all over the house for her, Catherine told me Miss Decima had gone out. She has gone to Clay Lane on some errand for Jan."

"Oh, of course for Jan!" resentfully spoke Lady Verner. "Nothing else, I should think, would take her to Clay Lane. You see, Lionel!"

"There's nothing in Clay Lane that will hurt Decima, mother."

Lady Verner made no reply. She walked to the door, and stood with the handle in her hand, turning round to speak.

"Lucy, I have been acquainting Lionel with this affair between you and Lord Garle. I have requested him to speak to you upon the point; to ascertain your precise grounds of objection, and--so far as he can--to do away with them. Try your best, Lionel."

She quitted the room, leaving them standing opposite each other.

Standing like two statues. Lionel's heart smote him. She looked so innocent, so good, in her delicate morning dress, with its gray ribbons and its white lace on the sleeves, open to the small fair arms! Simple as the dress was, it looked, in its exquisite taste, worth ten of Sibylla's elaborate French costumes. Her cheeks were glowing, her hands were trembling, as she stood there in her self-consciousness.

Terribly self-conscious was Lionel. He strove to say something, but in his embarrassment could not get out a single word. The conviction of the grievous fact, that she loved him, went right to his heart in that moment, and seated itself there. Another grievous fact came home to him; that she was more to him than the whole world. However he had pushed the suspicion away from his mind, refused to dwell on it, kept it down, it was all too plain to him now. He had made Sibylla his wife. He stood there, feeling that he loved Lucy above all created things.

He crossed over to her, and laid his hand fondly and gently on her head, as he moved to the door. "May God forgive me, Lucy!" broke from his white and trembling lips. "My own punishment is heavier than yours."

There was no need of further explanation on either side. Each knew that the love of the other was theirs, the punishment keenly bitter, as surely as if a hundred words had told it. Lucy sat down as the door closed behind him, and wondered how she should get through the long dreary life before her.

And Lionel? Lionel went out by Jan's favourite way, the back, and plunged into a dark lane where neither ear nor eye was on him. He uncovered his head, he threw back his coat, he lifted his breath to catch only a gasp of air. The sense of dishonour was stifling him.

CHAPTER XLIV.

FARMER BLOW'S WHITE-TAILED PONY.

Lionel Verner was just in that frame of mind which struggles to be carried out of itself. No matter whether by pleasure or pain, so that it be not that particular pain from which it would fain escape, the mind seeks yearningly to forget itself, to be lifted out anywhere, or by any means, from its trouble. Conscience was doing heavy work with Lionel. He had destroyed his own happiness--that was nothing; he could battle it out, and nobody be the wiser or the worse, save himself; but he had blighted Lucy's. _There_ was the sting that tortured him. A man of sensitively refined organisation, keenly alive to the feelings of others--full of repentant consciousness when wrong was worked through him, he would have given his whole future life and all its benefits, to undo the work of the last few months. Either that he had never met Lucy, or that he had not married Sibylla. _Which_ of those two events he would have preferred to recall, he did not trust himself to think; whatever may have been his faults, he had, until now, believed himself to be a man of honour. It was too late. Give what he would, strive as he would, repent as he would, the ill could neither be undone nor mitigated; it was one of those unhappy things for which there is no redress; they must be borne, as they best can, in patience and silence.

With these thoughts and feelings full upon him, little wonder was there that Lionel Verner, some two hours after quitting Lucy, should turn into Peckaby's shop. Mrs. Peckaby was seated back from the open door, crying, and moaning, and swaying herself about, apparently in terrible pain, physical or mental. Lionel remembered the story of the white donkey, and he stepped in to question her; anything for a minute's divertisement; anything to drown the care that was racking him. There was a subject on which he wished to speak to Roy, and that took him down Clay Lane.

"What's the matter, Mrs. Peckaby?"

Mrs. Peckaby rose from her chair, curtseyed, and sat down again. But for the state of tribulation she was in, she would have remained standing.

"Oh, sir, I have had a upset," she sobbed. "I see the white tail of a pony a-going by, and I thought it might be some'at else. It did give me a turn!"

"What did you think it might be?"

"I thought it might be the tail of a different sort of animal. I be a-going a far journey, sir, and I thought it was, may be, the quadruple come to fetch me. I'm a-going to New Jerusalem on a white donkey."

"So I hear," said Lionel, suppressing a smile, in spite of his heavy heart. "Do you go all the way on the white donkey, Mrs. Peckaby?"

"Sir, that's a matter that's hid from me," answered Mrs. Peckaby. "The gentleman that was sent back to me by Brother Jarrum, hadn't had particulars revealed to him. There's difficulties in the way of a animal on four legs which can't swim, doing it all, that I don't pretend to explain away. I'm content, when the hour comes, sir, to start, and trust. Peckaby, he's awful sinful, sir. Only last evening, when I was saying the quadruple might have mirac'lous parts give to it, like Balum's had in the Bible, Peckaby he jeered, and said he'd like to see Balum's or any other quadruple, set off to swim to America--that he'd find the bottom afore he found the land. I wonder the kitchen ceiling don't drop down upon his head! For myself, sir, I'm rejoiced to trust, as I says; and as soon as the white donkey do come, I shall mount him without fear."

"What do you expect to find at New Jerusalem?" asked Lionel.

"I could sooner tell you, sir, what I don't expect; it 'ud take up less time. There's a'most everything good at New Jerusalem that the world contains--Verner's Pride's a poor place to it, sir--saving your presence for saying so. I could have sat and listened to Brother Jarrum in this here shop for ever, sir, if it hadn't been that the longing was upon me to get there. In this part o' the world we women be poor, cast down, half-famished, miserable slaves; but in New Jerusalem we are the wives of saints, well cared for, and clothed and fed, happy as the day's long, and our own parlours to ourselves, and nobody to interrupt us. Yes, Peckaby, I'm a-telling his honour, Mr. Verner, what's a-waiting for me at New Jerusalem! And the sooner I'm on my road to it, the better."

The conclusion was addressed to Peckaby himself. Peckaby had just come in from the forge, grimed and dirty. He touched his hair to Lionel, an amused expression playing on his face. In point of fact, this New Jerusalem vision was affording the utmost merriment to Peckaby and a few more husbands. Peckaby had come home to his tea, which meal it was the custom of Deerham to enjoy about three o'clock. He saw no signs of its being in readiness; and, but for the presence of Mr. Verner, might probably have expressed his opinion demonstratively upon the point.

Peckaby, of late, appeared to have changed his nature and disposition.

From being a timid man, living under wife-thraldom, he had come to exercise thraldom over her. How far Mrs. Peckaby's state of low spirits, into which she was generally sunk, may have explained this, nobody knew.

"I have had a turn, Peckaby. I caught sight of a white tail a-going by, and I thought it might be the quadruple a-coming for me. I was shook, I can tell you. 'Twas more nor an hour ago, and I've been able to do nothing since, but sit here and weep; I couldn't redd up after that."

"Warn't it the quadrepid?" asked Peckaby in a mocking tone.

"No, it weren't," she moaned. "It were nothing but that white pony of Farmer Blow's."

"Him, was it," said Peckaby, with affected scorn. "He is in the forge now, he is; a-having his shoes changed, and his tail trimmed."

"I'd give a shilling to anybody as 'ud cut his tail off;" angrily rejoined Mrs. Peckaby. "A-deceiving of me, and turning my inside all of a quake! Oh, I wish it 'ud come! The white donkey as is to bear me to New Jerusalem!"