Verner's Pride. Mrs. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ is my maid, and her time is not half occupied. Decima exacts very little of her. But take care that you do not allow her to lapse into English when with you. It is what she is apt to do unless checked. You speak French, of course?" added Lady Verner, the thought crossing her that Mrs. Cust's educational training might have been as deficient on that point, as she deemed it had been on that of "style."

      "I speak it quite well," replied Lucy; "as well, or nearly as well, as a French girl. But I do not require anybody to wait on me," she continued. "There is never anything to do for me, but just to fasten these evening dresses that close behind. I am much obliged to you, all the same, for thinking of it, Lady Verner."

      Lady Verner turned from the subject: it seemed to grow more and more unprofitable. "I shall go and hear what Jan says, if he is there," she remarked to Lionel.

      "I wonder we did not see or hear him come in," was Lionel's answer.

      "As if Jan could come into the house like a gentleman!" returned Lady Verner, with intense acrimony. "The back way is a step or two nearer, and therefore he patronises it."

      She quitted the room as she spoke, and Lionel turned to Miss Tempest. He had been exceedingly amused and edified at the conversation between her and his mother; but while Lady Verner had been inclined to groan over it, he had rejoiced. That Lucy Tempest was thoroughly and genuinely unsophisticated; that she was of a nature too sincere and honest for her manners to be otherwise than of truthful simplicity, he was certain. A delightful child, he thought; one he could have taken to his heart and loved as a sister. Not with any other love: that was already given elsewhere by Lionel Verner.

      The winter evening was drawing on, and little light was in the room, save that cast by the blaze of the fire. It flickered upon Lucy's face, as she stood near it. Lionel drew a chair towards her. "Will you not sit down, Miss Tempest?"

      A formidable-looking chair, large and stately, as Lucy turned to look at it. Her eyes fell upon the low one which, earlier in the afternoon, had been occupied by Lady Verner. "May I sit in this one instead? I like it best."

      "You 'may' sit in any chair that the room contains, or on an ottoman, or anywhere that you like," answered Lionel, considerably amused. "Perhaps you would prefer this?"

      "This" was a very low seat indeed—in point of fact, Lady Verner's footstool. He had spoke in jest, but she waited for no second permission, drew it close to the fire, and sat down upon it. Lionel looked at her, his lips and eyes dancing.

      "Possibly you would have preferred the rug?"

      "Yes, I should," answered she frankly, "It is what we did at the rectory. Between the lights, on a winter's evening, we were allowed to do what we pleased for twenty minutes, and we used to sit down on the rug before the fire, and talk."

      "Mrs. Cust, also?" asked Lionel.

      "Not Mrs. Cust; you are laughing at me. If she came in, and saw us, she would say we were too old to sit there, and should be better on chairs. But we liked the rug best."

      "What had you used to talk of?"

      "Of everything, I think. About the poor; Mr. Cust's poor, you know; and the village, and our studies, and—But I don't think I must tell you that," broke off Lucy, laughing merrily at her own thoughts.

      "Yes, you may," said Lionel.

      "It was about that poor old German teacher of ours. We used to play her such tricks, and it was round the fire that we planned them. But she is very good," added Lucy, becoming serious, and lifting her eyes to Lionel, as if to bespeak his sympathy for the German teacher.

      "Is she?"

      "She was always patient and kind. The first time Lady Verner lets me go to a shop, I mean to buy her a warm winter cloak. Hers is so thin. Do you think I could get her one for two pounds?"

      "I don't know at all," smiled Lionel. "A greatcoat for me would cost more than two pounds."

      "I have two sovereigns left of my pocket-money, besides some silver. I hope it will buy a cloak. It is Lady Verner who will have the management of my money, is it not, now that I have left Mrs. Cust's?"

      "I believe so."

      "I wonder how much she will allow me for myself?" continued Lucy, gazing up at Lionel with a serious expression of inquiry, as if the question were a momentous one.

      "I think cloaks for old teachers ought to be apart," cried Lionel. "They should not come out of your pocket-money."

      "Oh, but I like them to do so. I wish I had a home of my own!—as I shall have when papa returns to Europe. I should invite her to me for the holidays, and give her nice dinners always, and buy her some nice clothes, and send her back with her poor old heart happy."

      "Invite whom?"

      "Fraulein Müller. Her father was a gentleman of good position, and he somehow lost his inheritance. When he died she found it out—there was not a shilling for her, instead of a fortune, as she had always thought. She was over forty then, and she had to come to England and begin teaching for a living. She is fifty now, and nearly all she gets she sends to Heidelberg to her poor sick sister. I wonder how much good warm cloaks do cost?"

      Lucy Tempest spoke the last sentence dreamily. She was evidently debating the question in her own mind. Her small white hands rested inertly upon her pink dress, her clear face with its delicate bloom was still, her eyes were bent on the fire. But that Lionel's heart was elsewhere, it might have gone out, there and then, to that young girl and her attractive simplicity.

      "What a pretty child you are!" involuntarily broke from him.

      Up came those eyes to him, soft and luminous, their only expression being surprise, not a shade of vanity.

      "I am not a child; why do you call me one? But Mrs. Cust said you would all be taking me for a child, until you knew me."

      "How old are you?" asked Lionel.

      "I was eighteen last September."

      "Eighteen!" involuntarily repeated Lionel.

      "Yes; eighteen. We had a party on my birthday. Mr. Cust gave me a most beautifully bound copy of Thomas à Kempis; he had had it bound on purpose. I will show it to you when my books are unpacked. You would like Mr. Cust, if you knew him. He is an old man now, and he has white hair. He is twenty years older than Mrs. Cust; but he is so good!"

      "How is it," almost vehemently broke forth Lionel, "that you are so different from others?"

      "I don't know. Am I different?"

      "So different—so different—that—that—"

      "What is the matter with me?" she asked timidly, almost humbly, the delicate colour in her cheeks deepening to crimson.

      "There is nothing the matter with you," he answered, smiling; "a good thing if there were as little the matter with everybody else. Do you know that I never saw any one whom I liked so much at first sight as I like you, although you appear to me only as a child? If I call here often I shall grow to love you almost as much as I love my sister Decima."

      "Is not this your home?"

      "No. СКАЧАТЬ