. "Do you want to keep me as a beggar? I
will have the ponies!"

He shook his head. "The subject is settled, Sibylla. If you cannot think
for yourself, I must think for you. But it was not to speak of the
ponies that I brought you here. What is it that you owe to Mrs. Duff?"

Sibylla's colour heightened. "It is no business of yours, Lionel, what I
owe her. There may be some trifle or other down in her book. It will be
time enough for you to concern yourself with my little petty debts when
you are asked to pay them."

"Then that time is the present one, with regard to Mrs. Duff. She
applied to me for the money this morning. At least, she asked if I would
speak to you--which is the same thing. She says you owe her thirty-two
pounds. Sibylla, I had far rather been stabbed than have heard it."

"A fearful sum, truly, to be doled out of your coffers!" cried Sibylla,
sarcastically. "You'll never recover it, I should think!"

"Not that--not that," was the reply of Lionel, his tone one of pain.
"Sibylla! have you _no_ sense of the fitness of things? Is it seemly for
the mistress of Verner's Pride to keep a poor woman, as Mrs. Duff is,
out of her money; a humble shopkeeper who has to pay her way as she
goes on?"

"I wish Fred had lived! He would never have taken me to task as you do."

"I wish he had!" was the retort in Lionel's heart; but he bit his lips
to silence, exchanging the words, after a few minutes' pause, for
others.

"You would have found Frederick Massingbird a less indulgent husband to
you than I have been," he firmly said. "But these remarks are
profitless, and will add to the comfort of neither you nor me. Sibylla,
I shall send, in your name, to pay this bill of Mrs. Duff's. Will you
give it me?"

"I dare say Benoite can find it, if you choose to ask her."

"And, my dear, let me beg of you not to contract these paltry debts.
There have been others, as you know. I do not like that Mrs. Verner's
name should be thus bandied in the village. What you buy in the village,
pay for at once."

"How can I pay while you stint me?"

"Stint you!" repeated Lionel, in amazement. "_Stint_ you!"

"It's nothing but stinting--going on at me as you do!" she sullenly
answered. "You would like to deprive me of the horses I have set my mind
upon! You know you would!"

"The horses you cannot have, Sibylla," he answered, his tone a decisive
one. "I have already said it."

It aroused her anger. "If you don't let me have