ousehold, including Tynn.

The dinner gone away and the wine on the table, Lionel drew his chair in
front of the fire, and fell into a train of thought, leaving the wine
untouched. Full half an hour had he thus sat, when the entrance of Tynn
aroused him. He poured out a glass, and raised it to his lips. Tynn bore
a note on his silver waiter.

"Matiss's boy has just brought it. He is waiting to know whether there's
any answer."

Lionel opened the note, and was reading it, when a sound of carriage
wheels came rattling on to the terrace, passed the windows, and stopped
at the hall door. "Who can be paying me a visit to-night, I wonder?"
cried he. "Go and see, Tynn."

"It sounded like one of them rattling one-horse flies from the railway
station," was Tynn's comment to his master, as he left the room.

Whoever it might be, they appeared pretty long in entering, and Lionel,
very greatly to his surprise, heard a sound as of much luggage being
deposited in the hall. He was on the point of going out to see, when the
door opened, and a lovely vision glided forward--a young, fair face and
form, clothed in deep mourning, with a shower of golden curls shading
her damask cheeks. For one single moment, Lionel was lost in the beauty
of the vision. Then he recognised her, before Tynn's announcement was
heard; and his heart leaped as if it would burst its bounds--

"Mrs. Massingbird, sir."

--leaped within him fast and furiously. His pulses throbbed, his blood
coursed on, and his face went hot and cold with emotion. Had he been
fondly persuading himself, during the past months, that she was
forgotten? Truly the present moment rudely undeceived him.

Tynn shut the door, leaving them alone. Lionel was not so agitated as to
forget the courtesies of life. He shook hands with her, and, in the
impulse of the moment, called her Sibylla; and then bit his tongue for
doing it.

She burst into tears. There, as he held her hand. She lifted her lovely
face to him with a yearning, pleading look. "Oh, Lionel!--you will give
me a home, won't you?"

What was he to say? He could not, in that first instant, abruptly say to
her--No, you cannot have a home here. Lionel could not hurt the feelings
of any one. "Sit down, Mrs. Massingbird," he gently said, drawing an
easy-chair to the fire. "You have taken me quite by surprise. When did
you land?"

She threw off her bonnet, shook back those golden curls, and sat down in
the chair, a large heavy s