e. With regard to his creditors there, he
must lay the state of the case frankly before them, and say: "Will you
leave me my liberty, and wait? You will get nothing by putting me in
prison, for I have no money of my own, and no friend to come forward and
advance it to clear me. Give me time, accord me my liberty, and I will
endeavour to pay you off by degrees." It was, at any rate, a
straightforward mode of going to work, and Lionel determined to adopt
it. Before mentioning it to his wife, he spoke to Lady Verner.

And then occurred the obstruction. Lady Verner, though she did not
oppose the plan, declined to take charge of Sibylla, or to retain her in
her house during Lionel's absence.

"I could not take her with me," said Lionel. "There would be more
objections to it than one. In the first place, I have not the means; in
the second--"

He came to an abrupt pause, and turned the words off. He had been about
incautiously to say, "She would most likely, once in London, run me into
deeper debt." But Lionel had kept the fact of her having run him into
debt at all, a secret in his own breast. Whatever may have been his
wife's faults and failings, he did not make it his business to proclaim
them to the world. She proclaimed enough herself, to his grievous
chagrin, without his helping to do it.

"Listen, Lionel," said Lady Verner. "You know what my feeling always was
with regard to your wife. A closer intercourse has not tended to change
that feeling, or to lessen my dislike of her. Now you must forgive my
saying this; it is but a passing allusion. Stay on with me as long as
you like; stay on for ever, if you will, and she shall stay; but if you
leave, she must leave. I should be sorry to have her here, even for a
week, without you. In fact, I would not."

"It would be quite impossible for me to take her to London," deliberated
Lionel. "I can be there alone at a very trifling cost; but a lady
involves so much expense. There must be lodgings, which are dear; and
living, which is dear; and attendance; and--and--many other sources of
outlay."

"And pray, what should you do, allowing that you went alone, without
lodgings and living and attendance, and all the rest of it?" asked Lady
Verner. "Take a room at one of their model lodging-houses, at half a
crown a week, and live upon the London air?"

"Not very healthy air for fastidious lungs," observed Lionel, with a
smile. "I don't quite know how I should manage for myself,