Verner's Pride. Henry Wood

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      "There's the great box I brought from India, and a hair-trunk, and my school-box. It is all in the van."

      "Allow me to take you out of this crowd, and it shall be seen to," said Lionel, bending to offer his arm.

      She took it, and turned with him; but stopped ere more than a step or two had been taken.

      "We are going wrong. The luggage is up that way."

      "I am taking you to the carriage. The luggage will be all right."

      He was placing her in it, when she suddenly drew back and surveyed it.

      "What a pretty carriage!" she exclaimed.

      Many said the same of the Verner's Pride equipages. The colour of the panels was of that rich shade of blue called ultra-marine, with white linings and hammer-cloths, while a good deal of silver shone on the harness of the horses. The servants' livery was white and silver, their small-clothes blue.

      Lionel handed her in.

      "Have we far to go?" she asked.

      "Not five minutes' drive."

      He closed the door, gave the footman directions about the luggage, took his own seat by the coachman, and the carriage started. Lady Verner came to the door of the Court to receive Miss Tempest.

      In the old Indian days of Lady Verner, she and Sir Lionel had been close and intimate friends of Colonel and Mrs. Tempest. Subsequently Mrs. Tempest had died, and their only daughter had been sent to a clergyman's family in England for her education—a very superior place, where six pupils only were taken. But she was of an age to leave it now, and Colonel Tempest, who contemplated soon being home, had craved of Lady Verner to receive her in the interim.

      "Lionel," said his mother to him, "you must stop here for the rest of the day, and help to entertain her."

      "Why, what can I do towards it?" responded Lionel.

      "You can do something. You can talk. They have got Decima into her room, and I must be up and down with her. I don't like leaving Lucy alone the first day she is in the house; she will take a prejudice against it. One blessed thing, she seams quite simple—not exacting."

      "Anything but exacting, I should say," replied Lionel. "I will stay for an hour or two, if you like, mother, but I must be home to dinner."

      Lady Verner need not have troubled herself about "entertaining" Lucy Tempest. She was accustomed to entertain herself; and as to any ceremony or homage being paid to her, she would not have understood it, and might have felt embarrassed had it been tendered. She had not been used to anything of the sort. Could Lady Verner have seen her then, at the very moment she was talking to Lionel, her fears might have been relieved. Lucy Tempest had found her way to Decima's room, and had taken up her position in a very undignified fashion at that young lady's feet, her soft, candid brown eyes fixed upwards on Decima's face, and her tongue busy with reminiscences of India. After some time spent in this manner, she was scared away by the entrance of a gentleman whom Decima called "Jan." Upon which she proceeded to the chamber she had been shown to as hers, to dress; a process which did not appear to be very elaborate by the time it took, and then she went downstairs to find Lady Verner.

      Lady Verner had not quitted Lionel. She had been grumbling and complaining all that time. It was half the pastime of Lady Verner's life to grumble in the ears of Lionel and Decima. Bitterly mortified had Lady Verner been when she found, upon her arrival from India, that Stephen Verner, her late husband's younger brother, had succeeded to Verner's Pride, to the exclusion of herself and of Lionel; and bitterly mortified she remained. Whether it had been by some strange oversight on the part of old Mr. Verner, or whether it had been intentional, no provision whatever had been left by him to Lady Verner and to her children. Stephen Verner would have remedied this. On the arrival of Lady Verner, he had proposed to pay over to her yearly a certain sum out of the estate; but Lady Verner, smarting under disappointment, under the sense of injustice, had flung his proposal back to him. Never, so long as he lived, she told Stephen Verner, passionately, would she be obliged to him for the worth of a sixpence in money or in kind. And she had kept her word.

      Her income was sadly limited. It was very little besides her pay as a colonel's widow; and to Lady Verner it seemed less than it really was, for her habits were somewhat expensive. She took this house, Deerham Court, then to be let without the land, had it embellished inside and out—which cost her more than she could afford, and had since resided in it. She would not have rented under Mr. Verner had he paid her to do it. She declined all intercourse with Verner's Pride; had never put her foot over its threshold. Decima went once in a way; but she, never. If she and Stephen Verner met abroad, she was coldly civil to him; she was indifferently haughty to Mrs. Verner, whom she despised in her heart for not being a lady. With all her deficiencies, Lady Verner was essentially a gentlewoman—not to be one amounted in her eyes to little less than a sin. No wonder that she, with her delicate beauty of person, her quiet refinements of dress, shrank within herself as she swept past poor Mrs. Verner, with her great person, her crimson face, and her flaunting colours! No wonder that Lady Verner, smarting under her wrongs, passed half her time giving utterance to them; or that her smooth face was acquiring premature wrinkles of discontent. Lionel had a somewhat difficult course to steer between Verner's Pride and Deerham Court, so as to keep friends with both.

      Lucy Tempest appeared at the door. She stood there hesitating, after the manner of a timid school-girl. They turned round and saw her.

      "If you please, may I come in?"

      Lady Verner could have sighed over the deficiency of "style," or confidence, whichever you may like to term it. Lionel laughed, as he crossed the room to throw the door wider by way of welcome.

      She wore a light shot pink dress of peculiar material, a sort of cashmere, very fine and soft. Looking at it one way it was pink, the other, mauve; the general shade of it was beautiful. Lady Verner could have sighed again: if the wearer was deficient in style, so also was the dress. A low body and short sleeves, perfectly simple, a narrow bit of white lace alone edging them: nothing on her neck, nothing on her arms, no gloves. A child of seven might have been so dressed. Lady Verner looked at her, her brow knit, and various thoughts running through her brain. She began to fear that Miss Tempest would require so much training as would give her trouble.

      Lucy saw the look, and deemed that her attire was wrong.

      "Ought I to have put on my best things—my new silk?" she asked.

      My new silk! My best things! Lady Verner was almost at a loss for an answer. "You have not an extensive wardrobe, possibly, my dear?"

      "Not very," replied Lucy. "This was my best dress, until I had my new silk. Mrs. Cust told me to put this one on for dinner to-day, and she said if Lady—if you and Miss Verner dressed very much, I could change it for the silk to-morrow. It is a beautiful dress," Lucy added, looking ingenuously at Lady Verner, "a pearl gray. Then I have my morning dresses, and then my white for dancing. Mrs. Cust said that anything you found deficient in my wardrobe it would be better for you to supply, than for her, as you would be the best judge of what I should require."

      "Mrs. Cust does not pay much attention to dress, probably," observed Lady Verner coldly. "She is a clergyman's wife. It is sad taste when people neglect themselves, whatever may be the duties of their station."

      "But Mrs. Cust does not neglect herself," spoke up Lucy, a surprised look upon her face. "She is always dressed nicely—not fine, you know. Mrs. Cust says that the lower classes have become so fine nowadays, that nearly the only way you may know a lady, until she speaks, is by her quiet simplicity."

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