oo, better
than she loved anything in life; and she drew a chair close to her, and
he sat down, bending towards her. There was not much likeness between
them, the mother and the son; both were very good-looking, but not
alike.

"You see, mother mine, I am not late, as you prophesied I should be,"
said he, with one of his sweetest smiles.

"You would have been, Lionel, but for my warning. I'm sure I wish--I
_wish_ she was not coming! She must remember the old days in India, and
will perceive the difference."

"She will scarcely remember India, when you were there. She is only a
child yet, isn't she?"

"You know nothing about it, Lionel," was the querulous answer. "Whether
she remembers or not, will she expect to see _me_ in such a house, in
such a position as this? It is at these seasons, when people are coming
here, who know what I have been and ought to be, that I feel all the
humiliation of my poverty. Lucy Tempest is nineteen."

Lionel Verner knew that it was of no use to argue with his mother, when
she began upon that most unsatisfactory topic, her position; which
included what she called her "poverty" and her "wrongs." Though, in
truth, not a day passed but she broke out upon it.

"Lionel," she suddenly said.

He had been glancing over the pages of the book--a new work on India. He
laid it down as he had found it, and turned to her.

"What shall you allow me when you come into Verner's Pride?"

"Whatever you shall wish, mother. You shall name the sum, not I. And if
you name too modest a one," he added laughingly, "I shall double it. But
Verner's Pride must be your home then, as well as mine."

"Never!" was the emphatic answer. "What! to be turned out of it again by
the advent of a young wife? No, never, Lionel."

Lionel laughed--constrainedly this time.

"I may not be bringing home a young wife for this many and many a year
to come."

"If you never brought one, I would not make my home at Verner's Pride,"
she resumed, in the same impulsive voice. "Live in the house by favour,
that ought to have been mine by right? You would not be my true son to
ask me, Lionel. Catherine, is that you?" she called out, as the
movements of some one were heard in the ante-room.

A woman-servant put in her head.

"My lady?"

"Tell Miss Verner that Mr. Lionel is here?"

"Miss Verner knows it, my lady," was the woman's reply. "She bade me ask
you, sir," addressing Lionel, "if you'd please to step out to her."

"Is