Lionel turned round.  He had been going out.

“We part friends, don’t we?”

“I can answer for myself,” said Lionel, a frank smile rising to his lips.  “It would be unjust to blame you for taking what you have a right to take.”

“All right.  Then, Lionel, you’ll come and see me here?”

“Sometimes.  Yes.”

They went out to the carriage, Lionel conducting his wife, and John in attendance, smoking his short pipe.  The handsome carriage, with its coat of ultra-marine, its rich white lining, its silver mountings, and its arms on the panels.  The Verner arms.  Would John paint them out?  Likely not.  One badge on the panels of his carriages was as good to John Massingbird as another.  He must have gone to the Herald’s College had he wanted to set up arms on his own account.

And that’s how Lionel and his wife went out of Verner’s Pride.  It seemed as if Deerham pavement and Deerham windows were lined on purpose to watch the exodus.  The time of their departure had got wind.

“I have done a job that goes again the grain, sir,” said Wigham to his late master, when the carriage had deposited its freight at Deerham Court, and was about to go back again.  “I never thought, sir, to drive you out of Verner’s Pride for the last time.”

“I suppose not, Wigham.  I thought it as little as you.”

“You’ll not forget, sir, that I should be glad to serve you, should you ever have room for me.  I’d rather live with you, sir, than with anybody else in the world.”

“Thank you, Wigham.  I fear that time will be very far off.”

“Or, if my lady should be changing her coachman, sir, perhaps she’d think of me.  It don’t seem nateral to me, sir, to drive anybody but a Verner.  Next to yourself, sir, I’d be proud to serve her ladyship.”

Lionel, in his private opinion, believed that Lady Verner would soon be compelled to part with her own coachman, to lay down her carriage.  Failing the income she had derived from his revenues, in addition to her own, he did not see how she was to keep up many of her present expenses.  He said farewell to Wigham and entered the Court.

Decima had hastened forward to welcome Sibylla.  Decima was one who, in her quiet way, was always trying to make the best of surrounding circumstances—­not for herself, but for others.  Let things be ever so dark, she would contrive to extract out of them some little ray of brightness.  Opposite as they were in person, in disposition she and Jan were true brother and sister.  She came forward to the door, a glad smile upon her face, and dressed rather more than usual.  It was one of her ways, the unwonted dress, of showing welcome and consideration to Sibylla.

“You are late, Mrs. Verner,” she said, taking her cordially by the hand.  “We have been expecting you some time.  Catherine!  Therese, see to these packages.”

Lady Verner had actually come out also.  She was too essentially the lady to show anything but strict courtesy to Sibylla, now that she was about to become an inmate under her roof.  What the effort cost her, she best knew.  It was no light one; and Lionel felt that it was not.  She stood in the hall, just outside the door of the ante-room, and took Sibylla’s hand as she approached.