it down; but Mr. Gordon told him there was no necessity;
any little ragged boy in the street could direct him to Dr. Cannonby's.
Then he went to make his proposed journey known to Sibylla. She was
standing near one of the terrace pillars, looking up at the sky, her
eyes shaded with her hand. Lionel drew her inside an unoccupied room.

"Sibylla, a little matter of business is calling me to London," he said.
"If I can catch the half-past ten train, I may be home again to-night,
late."

"How sudden!" cried Sibylla. "Why didn't you tell me? What weather shall
we have to-day, do you think?"

"Fine. But it is of little consequence to me whether it be fine or wet."

"Oh! I was not thinking of you," was the careless reply. "I want it to
be fine for our archery."

"Good-bye," he said, stooping to kiss her. "Take care of yourself."

"Lionel, mind, I shall have the ponies," was her answer, given in a
pouting, pretty, affected manner.

Lionel smiled, shook his head, took another kiss, and left her. Oh, if
he could but shield her from the tribulation that too surely seemed to
be ominously looming!

The lightest and fleetest carriage he possessed had been made ready, and
was waiting for him at the stables. He got in there, and drove off with
his groom, saying farewell to none, and taking nothing with him but an
overcoat. As he drove past Mrs. Duff's shop, the remembrance of the bill
came over him. He had forwarded the money to her the previous night in
his wife's name.

He caught the train; was too soon for it; it was five minutes behind
time. If those who saw him depart could but have divined the errand he
was bent on, what a commotion would have spread over Deerham! If the
handsome lady, seated opposite to him, the only other passenger in that
compartment, could but have read the cause which rendered him so
self-absorbed, so insensible to her attractions, she would have gazed at
him with far more interest.

"Who is that gentleman?" she privately asked of the guard when she got
the opportunity.

"Mr. Verner, of Verner's Pride."

He sat back on his seat, heeding nothing. Had all the pretty women of
the kingdom been ranged before him, in a row, they had been nothing to
Mr. Verner then. Had Lucy Tempest been there, he had been equally
regardless of her. If Frederick Massingbird were indeed in life,
Verner's Pride was no longer his. But it was not of that he thought; it
was of the calamity that would involve his wife. A