r arrival from India, that Stephen
Verner, her late husband's younger brother, had succeeded to Verner's
Pride, to the exclusion of herself and of Lionel; and bitterly mortified
she remained. Whether it had been by some strange oversight on the part
of old Mr. Verner, or whether it had been intentional, no provision
whatever had been left by him to Lady Verner and to her children.
Stephen Verner would have remedied this. On the arrival of Lady Verner,
he had proposed to pay over to her yearly a certain sum out of the
estate; but Lady Verner, smarting under disappointment, under the sense
of injustice, had flung his proposal back to him. Never, so long as he
lived, she told Stephen Verner, passionately, would she be obliged to
him for the worth of a sixpence in money or in kind. And she had kept
her word.

Her income was sadly limited. It was very little besides her pay as a
colonel's widow; and to Lady Verner it seemed less than it really was,
for her habits were somewhat expensive. She took this house, Deerham
Court, then to be let without the land, had it embellished inside and
out--which cost her more than she could afford, and had since resided in
it. She would not have rented under Mr. Verner had he paid her to do it.
She declined all intercourse with Verner's Pride; had never put her foot
over its threshold. Decima went once in a way; but she, never. If she
and Stephen Verner met abroad, she was coldly civil to him; she was
indifferently haughty to Mrs. Verner, whom she despised in her heart for
not being a lady. With all her deficiencies, Lady Verner was essentially
a gentlewoman--not to be one amounted in her eyes to little less than a
sin. No wonder that she, with her delicate beauty of person, her quiet
refinements of dress, shrank within herself as she swept past poor Mrs.
Verner, with her great person, her crimson face, and her flaunting
colours! No wonder that Lady Verner, smarting under her wrongs, passed
half her time giving utterance to them; or that her smooth face was
acquiring premature wrinkles of discontent. Lionel had a somewhat
difficult course to steer between Verner's Pride and Deerham Court, so
as to keep friends with both.

Lucy Tempest appeared at the door. She stood there hesitating, after the
manner of a timid school-girl. They turned round and saw her.

"If you please, may I come in?"

Lady Verner could have sighed over the deficiency of "style," or
confidence, whichever you may like t