a portion of his difficulties; and now those rents would be received by John Massingbird.  The furniture in the house, the plate, the linen, none of it was his; it had been left by the will with Verner’s Pride.  The five hundred pounds, all that he had inherited by that will, had been received at the time—­and was gone.  One general sinking fund seemed to have swallowed up everything; that, and all else; leaving a string of debts a yard long in its place.

Reproaches now would be useless; whether self-reproach, or reproach to his wife.  The latter Lionel would never have given.  And yet, when he looked back, and thought how free from debt he might have been, nothing but reproach, however vaguely directed, reproach of the past generally, seemed to fill his heart.  To turn out in the world, a free man, though penniless, would have been widely different from turning out, plunged over head and ears in difficulties.

In what quarter did he not owe money?  He could not say.  He had not been very provident, and Sibylla had not been provident at all.  But this much might be said for Lionel:  that he had not wasted money on useless things, or self-indulgence.  The improvements he had begun on the estate had been the chief drain, so far as he went; and the money they took had caused him to get backward with the general expenses.  He had also been over liberal to his mother.  Money was owing on all sides; for large things and for small; how much, Lionel did not yet know.  He did not know—­he was afraid to guess—­what private debts might have been contracted by his wife.  There had been times lately, when, in contemplating the embarrassment growing so hopelessly upon him, Lionel had felt inclined to wish that some climax would come and end it; but he had never dreamt of such a climax as this.  A hot flush dyed his cheeks as he remembered there was nearly a twelvemonth’s wages owing to most of his servants; and he had not the means now of paying them.

“Stop on a bit if you like,” said John Massingbird, in a hearty tone; “stop a month, if you will.  You are welcome.  It will be only changing your place from master to guest.”

From master to guest!  That same day John Massingbird assumed his own place, unasked, at the head of the dinner-table.  Lionel went to the side with a flushed face.  John Massingbird had never been remarkable for delicacy, but Lionel could not help thinking that he might have waited until he was gone, before assuming the full mastership.  Captain Cannonby made the third at the dinner, and he, by John Massingbird’s request, took the foot of the table.  It was not the being put out of his place that hurt Lionel so much, as the feeling of annoyance that John Massingbird could behave so unlike a gentleman.  He felt ashamed for him.  Dinner over, Lionel went up to his wife, who was keeping her room, partly from temper, partly from illness.

“Sibylla, I’ll not stop here another day,” he said.  “I see that John Massingbird wants us to go.  Now, what shall I do?  Take lodgings?”