.

"Was there any money left to me?--or to Frederick?"

"None to you. Verner's Pride was left to your husband; but at his demise
it came to me."

"Did my aunt leave me nothing?"

"She had nothing to leave, Mrs. Massingbird. The settlement which Mr.
Verner executed on her, when they married, was only for her life. It
lapsed back to the Verner's Pride revenues when she died."

"Then I am left without a shilling, to the mercy of the world!"

Lionel felt for her--felt for her rather more than was safe. He began
planning in his own mind how he could secure to her an income from the
Verner's Pride estate, without her knowing whence it came. Frederick
Massingbird had been its inheritor for a short three or four months,
and Lionel's sense of justice revolted against his widow being thrown on
the world, as she expressed it, without a shilling.

"The revenues of the estate during the short time that elapsed between
Mr. Verner's death and your husband's are undoubtedly yours, Mrs.
Massingbird," he said. "I will see Matiss about it, and they shall be
paid over."

"How long will it be first?"

"A few days, possibly. In a note which I received but now from Matiss,
he tells me he is starting for London, but will be home the beginning of
the week. It shall be arranged on his return."

"Thank you. And, until then, I may stay here?"

Lionel was at a nonplus. It is not a pleasing thing to tell a lady that
she must quit your house, in which, like a stray lamb, she has taken
refuge. Even though it be, for her own fair sake, expedient that she
should go.

"I am here alone," said Lionel, after a pause. "Your temporary home had
better be with your sisters."

"No, that it never shall," returned Sibylla, in a hasty tone of fear. "I
will never go home to them, now papa's away. Why did he leave Deerham?
They told me at the station that he was gone, and Jan was doctor."

"Dr. West is travelling on the Continent, as medical attendant and
companion to a nobleman. At least--I think I heard it was a nobleman,"
continued Lionel. "I am really not sure."

"And you would like me to go home to those two cross, fault-finding
sisters!" she resumed. "They might reproach me all day long with coming
home to be kept. As if it were my fault that I am left without anything.
Oh, Lionel! don't turn me out! Let me stay until I can see what is to be
done for myself. I shall not hurt you. It would have been all mine had
Frederick lived."

He did not