day came over it then. In her own mind she had been weaving a pretty
little romance for Lionel; and it was her dread, lest that romance
should be interfered with, which had called up her fears, touching Lucy
Tempest.

"My darling Lionel, you know where you might go and choose a wife," she
said. "I have long wished that you would do it. Beauty, rank,
wealth--you may win them for the asking."

A slightly self-conscious smile crossed the lips of Lionel.

"You are surely not going to introduce again that nonsense about Mary
Elmsley!" he exclaimed. "I should never like her, never marry her,
therefore--"

"Did you not allude to _her_ when you spoke but now--that it was not
Lucy Tempest you should make your wife?"

"No."

"To whom, then? Lionel, I must know it."

Lionel's cheek flushed scarlet. "I am not going to marry yet--I have no
intention of it. Why should this conversation have arisen?"

The words seemed to arouse a sudden dread on the part of Lady Verner.
"Lionel," she gasped in a low tone, "there is a dreadful fear coming
over me. Not Lady Mary! Some one else! I remember Decima said one day
that you appeared to care more for Sibylla West than for her, your
sister. I have never thought of it from that hour to this. I paid no
more attention to it than though she had said you cared for my maid
Therese. You _cannot_ care for Sibylla West!"

Lionel had high notions of duty as well as of honour, and he would not
equivocate to his mother. "I do care very much for Sibylla West," he
said in a low tone; "and, please God, I hope she will sometime be my
wife. But, mother, this confidence is entirely between ourselves. I beg
you not to speak of it; it must not be suffered to get abroad."

The one short sentence of avowal over, Lionel might as well have talked
to the moon. Lady Verner heard him not. She was horrified. The Wests in
her eyes were utterly despicable. Dr. West was tolerated _as_ her
doctor; but as nothing else. Her brave Lionel--standing there before her
in all the pride of his strength and his beauty--_he_ sacrifice himself
to Sibylla West! Of the two, Therese might have been the less dreadful
to the mind of Lady Verner.

A quarrel ensued. Stay--that is a wrong word. It was not a quarrel, for
Lady Verner had all the talking, and Lionel would not respond angrily;
he kept his lips pressed together lest he should. Never had Lady Verner
been moved to make a like scene. She reproached, she sobbed, she
entreate