hundred words had told it. Lucy sat down as the door
closed behind him, and wondered how she should get through the long
dreary life before her.

And Lionel? Lionel went out by Jan's favourite way, the back, and
plunged into a dark lane where neither ear nor eye was on him. He
uncovered his head, he threw back his coat, he lifted his breath to
catch only a gasp of air. The sense of dishonour was stifling him.

CHAPTER XLIV.

FARMER BLOW'S WHITE-TAILED PONY.

Lionel Verner was just in that frame of mind which struggles to be
carried out of itself. No matter whether by pleasure or pain, so that it
be not that particular pain from which it would fain escape, the mind
seeks yearningly to forget itself, to be lifted out anywhere, or by any
means, from its trouble. Conscience was doing heavy work with Lionel. He
had destroyed his own happiness--that was nothing; he could battle it
out, and nobody be the wiser or the worse, save himself; but he had
blighted Lucy's. _There_ was the sting that tortured him. A man of
sensitively refined organisation, keenly alive to the feelings of
others--full of repentant consciousness when wrong was worked through
him, he would have given his whole future life and all its benefits, to
undo the work of the last few months. Either that he had never met Lucy,
or that he had not married Sibylla. _Which_ of those two events he would
have preferred to recall, he did not trust himself to think; whatever
may have been his faults, he had, until now, believed himself to be a
man of honour. It was too late. Give what he would, strive as he would,
repent as he would, the ill could neither be undone nor mitigated; it
was one of those unhappy things for which there is no redress; they must
be borne, as they best can, in patience and silence.

With these thoughts and feelings full upon him, little wonder was there
that Lionel Verner, some two hours after quitting Lucy, should turn into
Peckaby's shop. Mrs. Peckaby was seated back from the open door, crying,
and moaning, and swaying herself about, apparently in terrible pain,
physical or mental. Lionel remembered the story of the white donkey, and
he stepped in to question her; anything for a minute's divertisement;
anything to drown the care that was racking him. There was a subject on
which he wished to speak to Roy, and that took him down Clay Lane.

"What's the matter, Mrs. Peckaby?"

Mrs. Peckaby rose from her chair, curtseyed, and sat do