“The revenues of the estate during the short time that elapsed between Mr. Verner’s death and your husband’s are undoubtedly yours, Mrs. Massingbird,” he said.  “I will see Matiss about it, and they shall be paid over.”

“How long will it be first?”

“A few days, possibly.  In a note which I received but now from Matiss, he tells me he is starting for London, but will be home the beginning of the week.  It shall be arranged on his return.”

“Thank you.  And, until then, I may stay here?”

Lionel was at a nonplus.  It is not a pleasing thing to tell a lady that she must quit your house, in which, like a stray lamb, she has taken refuge.  Even though it be, for her own fair sake, expedient that she should go.

“I am here alone,” said Lionel, after a pause.  “Your temporary home had better be with your sisters.”

“No, that it never shall,” returned Sibylla, in a hasty tone of fear.  “I will never go home to them, now papa’s away.  Why did he leave Deerham?  They told me at the station that he was gone, and Jan was doctor.”

“Dr. West is travelling on the Continent, as medical attendant and companion to a nobleman.  At least—­I think I heard it was a nobleman,” continued Lionel.  “I am really not sure.”

“And you would like me to go home to those two cross, fault-finding sisters!” she resumed.  “They might reproach me all day long with coming home to be kept.  As if it were my fault that I am left without anything.  Oh, Lionel! don’t turn me out!  Let me stay until I can see what is to be done for myself.  I shall not hurt you.  It would have been all mine had Frederick lived.”

He did not know what to do.  Every moment there seemed to grow less chance that she would leave the house.  A bright thought darted into his mind.  It was, that he would get his mother or Decima to come and stay with him for a time.

“What would you like to take?” he inquired.  “Mrs. Tynn will get you anything you wish.  I——­”

“Nothing yet,” she interrupted.  “I could not eat; I am too unhappy.  I will take some tea presently, but not until I am warmer.  I am very cold.”

She cowered over the fire again, shivering much.  Lionel, saying he had a note to write, sat down to a distant table.  He penned a few hasty lines to his mother, telling her that Mrs. Massingbird had arrived, under the impression that she was coming to Mrs. Verner, and that he could not well turn her out again that night, fatigued and poorly as she appeared to him to be.  He begged his mother to come to him for a day or two, in the emergency, or to send Decima.

An undercurrent of conviction ran in Lionel’s mind during the time of writing it that his mother would not come; he doubted even whether she would allow Decima to come.  He drove the thought away from him; but the impression remained.  Carrying the note out of the room when written, he despatched it to Deerham Court by a mounted groom.  As he was returning to the dining-room he encountered Mrs. Tynn.