umbrella--large enough for a
carriage--close to the trees, that it might shelter her as she came
forth.

"Take my arm, Lucy."

She hesitated for a single moment--a hesitation so temporary that any
other than Lionel could not have observed it, and then took his arm. And
again they walked on in silence. In passing down Clay Lane--the way
Lionel took--Mrs. Peckaby was standing at her door.

"On the look-out for the white donkey, Mrs. Peckaby?" asked Lionel.

The husband inside heard the words, and flew into a tantrum.

"She's never on the look-out for nothing else, sir, asking pardon for
saying it to you."

Mrs. Peckaby clasped her hands together.

"It'll come!" she murmured. "Sometimes, sir, when my patience is well
nigh exhausted, I has a vision of the New Jerusalem in the night, and is
revived. It'll come, sir, the quadruple'll come!"

"I wonder," laughed Lucy, as they walked on, "whether she will go on to
the end of her life expecting it?"

"If her husband will allow her," answered Lionel. "But by what I have
heard since I came home, his patience is--as she says by her own with
reference to the white 'quadruple'--well nigh exhausted."

"He told Decima, the other day, that he was sick of the theme and of her
folly, and he wished the New Jerusalem had her and the white donkey
together. Here we are!" added Lucy, as they came in front of Deerham
Court. "Lionel, please, let me go in the back way--Jan's way. And then
Lady Verner will not see me. She will say I ought not to have come
through the rain."

"She'll see the shoes and the silk dress, and she'll say you should have
stopped at Verner's Pride, as a well-trained young lady ought," returned
Lionel.

He took her safely to the back door, opened it, and sent her in.

"Thank you very much," said she, holding out her hand to him. "I have
given you a disagreeable walk, and now I must give you one back again."

"Change your shoes at once, and don't talk foolish things," was Lionel's
answer.

CHAPTER LVIII.

THE THUNDER-STORM.

A wet walk back Lionel certainly had; but, wet or dry, it was all the
same in his present distressed frame of mind. Arrived at Verner's Pride,
he found his wife dressed for dinner, and the centre of a host of guests
gay as she was. No opportunity, then, to question her about Frederick
Massingbird's death, and how far Captain Cannonby was cognisant of the
particulars.

He had to change his own things. It was barely done by