it.

"How long does she purpose honouring Verner's Pride with her presence,
and keeping you out of it?" resumed Lady Verner.

"I do not know what her plans for the present may be," he answered, his
cheeks burning at the thought of the avowal he had to make--that her
future plans would be contingent upon his. Not the least painful of the
results which Lionel's haste had brought in its train, was the knowledge
of the shock it would prove to his mother, whom he so loved and
reverenced. Why had he not thought of it at the time?

Breakfast over, Lionel went out, a very coward. A coward, in so far as
that he had shrunk from making yet the confession. He was aware that it
ought to be done. The presence of Decima and Lucy Tempest had been his
mental excuse for putting off the unwelcome task.

But a better frame of mind came over him ere he had gone many paces from
the door; better, at any rate, as regarded the cowardice.

"A Verner never shrank yet from his duty," was his comment, as he bent
his steps back again. "Am I turning renegade?"

He went straight up to Lady Verner, and asked her, in a low tone, to
grant him a minute's private interview. They had breakfasted in the room
which made the ante-room to the drawing-room; it was their usual
morning-room. Lady Verner answered her son by stepping into the
drawing-room.

He followed her and closed the door. The fire was but just lighted,
scarcely giving out any heat. She slightly shivered, and requested him
to stir it. He did so mechanically--wholly absorbed by the revelation he
had to impart. He remembered how she had once fainted at nearly the same
revelation.

"Mother, I have a communication to make to you," he began with desperate
energy, "and I don't know how to do it. It will pain you greatly.
Nothing that I can think of, or imagine, would cause you so much pain."

Lady Verner seated herself in her low violet-velvet chair, and looked
composedly at Lionel. She did not dread the communication very much. He
was secure in Verner's Pride; what could there be that she need fear?
She no more cast a glance to the possibility of his marrying the widow
of Frederick Massingbird, than she would have done to his marrying that
gentleman's wife. Buried in this semi-security, the shock must be all
the greater.

"I am about to marry," said Lionel, plunging into the news headlong.
"And I fear that you will not approve my choice. Nay, I know you will
not."

A foreshadowing of t