ce you became mine, has been
spent for you; in promoting your happiness; in striving to give you more
love than has been given to me. I have never met you with an unkind
word; I have never given you a clouded look. You will think of this
when we are separated. And, for myself, its remembrance will be to my
conscience as a healing balm."

Dropping her hands, he drew back to his corner of the chariot, his head
leaning against the fair, white watered silk, as if heavy with
weariness. In truth, it was so; heavy with the weariness caused by
carking care. He had spoken all too impulsively; the avowal was wrung
from him in the moment's bitter strife. A balm upon his conscience that
he had done his duty by her in love? Ay. For the love of his inmost
heart had been another's--not hers.

Sibylla did not understand the allusion. It was well. In her weak and
trifling manner, she was subsiding into tears when the carriage suddenly
stopped. Lionel, his thoughts never free, since a day or two, of
Frederick Massingbird, looked up with a start, almost expecting to see
him.

Lady Verner's groom had been galloping on horseback to Verner's Pride.
Seeing Mr. Verner's carriage, and himself inside it, he had made a sign
to Wigham, who drew up. The man rode up to the window, a note in his
hand.

"Miss Verner charged me to lose no time in delivering it to you, sir.
She said it was immediate. I shouldn't else have presumed to stop your
carriage."

He backed his horse a step or two, waiting for the answer, should there
be any. Lionel ran his eyes over the contents of the note.

"Tell Miss Verner I will call upon her shortly, Philip."

And the man, touching his hat, turned his horse round, and galloped back
towards Deerham Court.

"What does she want? What is it?" impatiently asked Sibylla.

"My mother wishes to see me," replied Lionel.

"And what else? I know _that's_ not all," reiterated Sibylla, her tone a
resentful one. "You have always secrets at Deerham Court against me."

"Never in my life," he answered. "You can read the note, Sibylla."

She caught it up, devouring its few lines rapidly. Lionel believed it
must be the doubt, the uncertainty, that was rendering her so irritable;
in his heart he felt inclined to make every allowance for her; more,
perhaps, than she deserved. There were but a few lines:--

"Do come to us at once, my dear Lionel! A most strange report
has reached us, and mamma is like one bereft of her