“Do you not wish to go?” rejoined Lady Verner.

“I would very much prefer not,” he replied.

“Nonsense, Lionel!  I don’t think you have gone out once since you left Verner’s Pride.  Staying at home won’t mend matters.  I wish you to go with me; I shall make a point of it.”

Lady Verner spoke with some irritation, and Lionel said no more.  He supposed he must acquiesce.

It was no long-timed invitation of weeks.  The cards arrived on the Monday, and the fete was for the following Thursday.  Lionel thought no more about it; he was not as the ladies, whose toilettes would take all of that time to prepare.  On the Wednesday, Decima took him aside.

“Lionel, do you know that Mrs. Verner intends to go to-morrow evening?”

Lionel paused; paused from surprise.

“You must be mistaken, Decima.  She sent a refusal.”

“I fancy that she did not send a refusal.  And I feel sure she is thinking of going.  You will not judge that I am unwarrantably interfering,” Decima added in a tone of deprecation.  “I would not do such a thing.  But I thought it was right to apprise you of this.  She is not well enough to go out.”

With a pressure of the hand on his sister’s shoulder, and a few muttered words of dismay, which she did not catch, Lionel sought his wife.  No need of questioning, to confirm the truth of what Decima had said.  Sibylla was figuring off before the glass, after the manner of her girlish days, with a wreath of white flowers on her head.  It was her own sitting-room, the pretty room of the blue and white panels; and the tables and chairs were laden with other wreaths, with various head ornaments.  She was trying their different effects, when, on turning round her head as the door opened, she saw it was her husband.  His presence did not appear to discompose her, and she continued to place the wreath to her satisfaction, pulling it here and there with her thin and trembling hands.

“What are you doing?” asked Lionel.

“Trying on wreaths,” she replied.

“So I perceive.  But why?”

“To see which suits me best.  This looks too white for me, does it not?” she added, turning her countenance towards him.

If to be the same hue as the complexion was “too white,” it certainly did look so.  The dead white of the roses was not more utterly colourless than Sibylla’s face.  She was like a ghost; she often looked so now.

“Sibylla,” he said, without answering her question, “you are surely not thinking of going to Sir Edmund’s to-morrow night?”

“Yes, I am.”

“You said you would write a refusal!”

“I know I said it.  I saw how cross-grained you were going to be over it, and that’s why I said it to you.  I accepted the invitation.”

“But, my dear, you must not go!”

Sibylla was flinging off the white wreath, and taking up a pink one, which she began to fix in her hair.  She did not answer.