for Decima, but I did not think it right to deprive Lucy of the pleasure, and she could not go alone. Ungrateful child!” apostrophised Lady Verner.
“When I told her this morning I had accepted an invitation for her to Verner’s Pride, she turned the colour of scarlet, and said she would rather remain at home. I never saw so unsociable a girl; she never cares to go out, as it seems to me. I insisted upon it for this evening.”
“Mother, why don’t you come?”
Lady Verner half turned from him.
“Lionel, you must not forget our compact. If I visit your wife now and then, just to keep gossiping tongues quiet, from saying that Lady Verner and her son are estranged, I cannot do it often.”
“Were there any cause why you should show this disfavour to Sibylla—”
“Our compact, our compact, my son! You are not to urge me upon this point, do you remember? I rarely break my resolutions, Lionel.”
“Or your prejudices either, mother.”
“Very true,” was the equable answer of Lady Verner.
Little more was said. Lionel found the time drawing on, and left. Lady Verner’s carriage was already at the door, waiting to convey Decima and Lucy Tempest to the dinner at Verner’s Pride. As he was about to mount his horse, Peckaby passed by, rolling a wheel before him. He touched his cap.
“Well,” said Lionel, “has the white donkey arrived yet?”
A contraction of anger, not, however, unmixed with mirth, crossed the man’s face.
“I wish it would come, sir, and bear her off on’t!” was his hearty response. “She’s more a fool nor ever over it, a whining and a pining all day long, ’cause she ain’t at New Jerusalem. She wants to be in Bedlam, sir; that’s what she do! it ’ud do her more good nor t’other.”
Lionel laughed, and Peckaby struck his wheel with such impetus that it went off at a tangent, and he had to follow it on the run.
CHAPTER XXXIV. THE YEW-TREE ON THE LAWN.
The rooms were lighted at Verner’s Pride: the blaze from the chandeliers fell on gay faces and graceful forms. The dinner was over, its scene “a banquet hall deserted;” and the guests were filling the drawing-rooms.
The centre of an admiring group, its chief attraction, sat Sibylla, her dress some shining material that glimmered in the light, and her hair confined with a band of diamonds. Inexpressibly beautiful by this light she undoubtedly was, but she would have been more charming had she less laid herself out for attraction. Lionel, Lord Garle, Decima, and young Bitterworth—he was generally called young Bitterworth, in contradistinction to his father, who was “old Bitterworth”—formed another group; Sir Rufus Hautley was talking to the Countess of Elmsley: and Lucy Tempest sat apart near the window.
Sir Rufus had but just moved away from Lucy, and for the moment she was alone. She sat within the embrasure of the window, and was looking on the calm scene outside. How different from the garish scene within! See the pure moonlight, side by side with the most brilliant light we earthly inventors can produce, and contrast them! Pure and fair as the moonlight looked Lucy, her white robes falling softly round her, and her girlish face wearing a thoughtful expression. It was a remarkably light night: the terrace, the green slopes beyond it, and the clustering trees far away, all standing out clear and distinct in the moon’s rays. Suddenly her eye rested on a particular spot: she possessed a very clear sight, and it appeared to detect something dark there; which dark something had not been there a few moments before.
Lucy strained her eyes, and shaded them, and gazed again. Presently she turned her head, and glanced at Lionel. An expression in her eyes seemed to call him, and he advanced.
“What is it, Lucy? We must have a set of gallant men here to-night, to leave you alone like this!”
The compliment fell unheeded on her ear. Compliments from him! Lionel only so spoke to hide his real feelings.
“Look on the lawn, right before us,” said Lucy to him, in a low tone. “Underneath the spreading yew tree. Do you not fancy the trunk looks remarkably dark and thick?”
“The trunk remarkably dark and thick!” echoed Lionel. “What do you mean, Lucy?” For he judged by her tone that she had some hidden meaning.
“I believe that some man is standing there. He must be watching us.”
Lionel could not see it. His eyes had not been watching so long as Lucy’s, consequently objects were less distinct. “I think you must be mistaken, Lucy,” he said. “No one would be at the trouble of standing there to watch us. It is too far off to see much, whatever may be their curiosity.”
Lucy held her hands over her eyes, gazing attentively from beneath them. “I feel convinced of it now,” she presently said. “There is some one, and it looks like a man, standing behind the trunk, as if hiding himself. His head is pushed out on this side, certainly, as if he were watching these windows. I have seen the head move twice.”
Lionel placed his hands in the same position, and took a long gaze. “I do think you are right, Lucy!” he suddenly exclaimed. “I saw something move then. What business has anyone to plant himself there?”
He stepped impulsively out as he spoke: the windows opened to the ground: crossed the terrace, descended the steps, and turned on the lawn, to the left hand. A minute, and he was up at the tree.
But he gained no satisfaction. The spreading tree, with its imposing trunk—which trunk was nearly as thick as a man’s body—stood all solitary on the smooth grass, no living thing being near it.
“We must have been mistaken, after all,” thought Lionel.
Nevertheless, he stood under the tree, and cast his keen glances around. Nothing could he see;