“Are you aware of the changes that have taken place since you left?” he asked.  “Your aunt is dead.”

“Yes, I know it,” she answered.  “They told me at the station just now.  That lame porter came up and knew me; and his first news to me was that Mrs. Verner was dead.  What a greeting!  I was coming home here to live with her.”

“You could not have received my letter.  One which I wrote at the request of Mrs. Verner in answer to yours.”

“What news was in it?” she asked.  “I received no letter from you.”

“It contained remittances.  It was sent, I say, in answer to yours, in which you requested money should be forwarded for your home passage.  You did not wait for it?”

“I was tired of waiting.  I was sick for home.  And one day, when I had been crying more than usual, Mrs. Eyre said to me that if I were so anxious to go, there need be no difficulty about the passage-money, that they would advance me any amount I might require.  Oh, I was so glad!  I came away by the next ship.”

“Why did you not write saying that you were coming?”

“I did not think it mattered—­and I knew I had this home to come to.  If I had had to go to my old home again at papa’s, then I should have written.  I should have seemed like an intruder arriving at their house, and have deemed it necessary to warn them of it.”

“You heard in Australia of Mr. Verner’s death, I presume?”

“I heard of that, and that my husband had inherited Verner’s Pride.  The news came out just before I sailed for home.  Of course I thought I had a right to come to this home, though he was dead.  I suppose it is yours now?”

“Yes.”

“Who lives here?”

“Only myself.”

“Have I a right to live here—­as Frederick’s widow?” she continued, lifting her large blue eyes anxiously at Lionel.  “I mean would the law give it me?”

“No,” he replied, in a low tone.  He felt that the truth must be told to her without disguise.  She was placing both him and herself in an embarrassing situation.

“Was there any money left to me?—­or to Frederick?”

“None to you.  Verner’s Pride was left to your husband; but at his demise it came to me.”

“Did my aunt leave me nothing?”

“She had nothing to leave, Mrs. Massingbird.  The settlement which Mr. Verner executed on her, when they married, was only for her life.  It lapsed back to the Verner’s Pride revenues when she died.”

“Then I am left without a shilling, to the mercy of the world!”

Lionel felt for her—­felt for her rather more than was safe.  He began planning in his own mind how he could secure to her an income from the Verner’s Pride estate, without her knowing whence it came.  Frederick Massingbird had been its inheritor for a short three or four months, and Lionel’s sense of justice revolted against his widow being thrown on the world, as she expressed it, without a shilling.