d has gone by. I thank you very sincerely."

And so Lionel Verner was once more to be turned from Verner's Pride, to
take up his abode with his wife in his mother's home. When were his
wanderings to be at rest?

CHAPTER LXX.

TURNING OUT.

The battle that there was with Mrs. Verner! She cried, she sobbed, she
protested, she stormed, she raved. Willing enough, was she, to go to
Lady Verner's; indeed the proposed visit appeared to be exceedingly
palatable to her; but she was not willing to go without Mademoiselle
Benoite. She was used to Benoite; Benoite dressed her, and waited on
her, and read to her, and took charge of her things; Benoite was in her
confidence, kept her purse; she could not do without Benoite, and it was
barbarous of Lionel to wish it. How could she manage without a maid?

Lionel gravely laid his hand upon her shoulder. Some husbands might have
reminded her that until she married him she had never known the services
of a personal attendant; that she had gone all the way to Melbourne,
had--as John Massingbird had expressed it with regard to himself--been
knocking about there, and had come back home again alone, all without so
much as thinking of one. Not so Lionel. He laid his hand upon her
shoulder in his grave kindness.

"Sibylla, do you forget that we have no longer the means to keep
ourselves? I must find a way to do that, before I can afford you a
lady's maid. My dear, I am very sorry; you know I am; for that, and all
the other discomforts that you are meeting with; but there is no help
for it. I trust that some time or other I shall be able to remedy it."

"We should not have to keep her," argued Sibylla. "She'd live with Lady
Verner's servants."

Neither did he remind her that Lady Verner would have sufficient tax,
keeping himself and her. One would have thought her own delicacy of
feeling might have suggested it.

"It cannot be, Sibylla. Lady Verner has no accommodation for Benoite."

"She must make accommodation. When people used to come here to visit us,
they brought their servants with them."

"Oh, Sibylla! can you not see the difference? But--what do you owe
Benoite?" he added in a different tone.

"I don't owe her anything," replied Sibylla eagerly, quite mistaking the
motive of the question. "I have always paid her every month. She'd never
let it go on."

"Then there will be the less trouble," thought Lionel.

He called Benoite to him, then packing up Sibylla's thin