s artificial state of things! Where
the customs of society must be bowed to, by those who live in it; their
actions, good or bad, commented upon and judged! You have been
expecting that I should call before this, I suppose, Lionel?"

"I have been hoping, from day to day, that you would call."

"I will call--for your sake. Lionel," she passionately added, turning to
him, and seizing his hands between hers, "what I do now, I do for your
sake. It has been a cruel blow to me; but I will try to make the best of
it, for you, my best-loved son."

He bent down to his mother, and kissed her tenderly. It was his mode of
showing her his thanks.

"Do not mistake me, Lionel. I will go just so far in this matter as may
be necessary to avoid open disapproval. If I appear to approve it, that
the world may not cavil and you complain, it will be little more than an
appearance. I will call upon your intended wife, but the call will be
one of etiquette, of formal ceremony: you must not expect me to get into
the habit of repeating it. I shall never become intimate with her."

"You do not know what the future may bring forth," returned Lionel,
looking at his mother with a smile. "I trust the time will come when you
shall have learned to love Sibylla."

"I do not think that time will ever arrive," was the frigid reply of
Lady Verner. "Oh, Lionel!" she added, in an impulse of sorrow, "what a
barrier this has raised between us--what a severing for the future!"

"The barrier exists in your own mind only, mother," was his answer,
spoken sadly. "Sibylla would be a loving daughter to you, if you would
allow her so to be."

A slight, haughty shake of the head, suppressed at once, was the reply
of Lady Verner. "I had looked for a different daughter," she continued.
"I had hoped for Mary Elmsley."

"Upon this point, at any rate, there need be no misunderstanding,"
returned Lionel. "Believe me once for all, mother: I should never have
married Mary Elmsley. Had I and Sibylla remained apart for life,
separated as wide as the two poles, it is not Mary Elmsley whom I should
have made my wife. It is more than probable that my choice would have
pleased you only in a degree more than it does now."

The jealous ears of Lady Verner detected an undercurrent of meaning in
the words.

"You speak just as though you had some one in particular in your
thoughts!" she uttered.

It recalled Lucy, it recalled the past connected with her, all too
plainly to