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