s very kind of you to come to see me," said Sibylla, speaking
timidly across to Lady Verner.

Lady Verner slightly bowed. "You do not look strong," she observed to
Sibylla, speaking in the moment's impulse. "Are you well?"

"I am pretty well. I am not strong. Since I returned home, a little
thing seems to flutter me, as your entrance has done now. Lionel had
just told me you would call upon me, he thought. I was so glad to hear
it! Somehow I had feared you would not."

Candid, at any rate; and Lady Verner did not disapprove the apparent
feeling that prompted it; but how her heart revolted at hearing those
lips pronounce "Lionel" familiarly, she alone could tell. Again came the
offence.

"Lionel tells me sometimes I am so changed since I went out, that even
he would scarcely have known me. I do not think I am so changed as all
that. I had a great deal of vexation and trouble, and I grew thin. But I
shall soon be well again now."

A pause.

"You ascertained no certain news of John Massingbird, I hear," observed
Lady Verner.

"Not any. A gentleman there is endeavouring to trace out more
particulars. I heard--did Lionel mention to you--that I heard, strange
to say, of Luke Roy, from the family I was visiting--the Eyres?
Lionel"--turning to him--"did you repeat it to Lady Verner?"

"I believe not," replied Lionel. He could not say to Sibylla, "My mother
would tolerate no conversation on any topic connected with you."

Another flagging pause.

Lionel, to create a divertisement, raised a remarkably, fine specimen
of coral from the table, and carried it to his mother.

"It is beautiful," he remarked. "Sibylla brought it home with her."

Lady Verner allowed that it was beautiful.

"Show it to Lucy," she said, when she had examined it with interest.
"Lucy, my dear, do you remember what I was telling you the other
evening, about the black coral?"

Sibylla rose and approached Lucy with Lionel.

"I am so pleased to make your acquaintance," she said warmly. "You only
came to Deerham a short while before I was leaving it, and I saw
scarcely anything of you. Lionel has seen a great deal of you, I fancy,
though he will not speak of you. I told him one day it looked
suspicious; that I should be jealous of you, if he did not mind."

It was a foolish speech--foolish of Sibylla to give utterance to it; but
she did so in all singleness of heart, meaning nothing. Lucy was bending
over the coral, held by Lionel. She felt he