He went out without ceremony.  Lionel walked with him to the door.  It was a fine, starlight evening.  When he, Lionel, returned, Lucy was alone.  Mary Elmsley had left the room.

Lucy had quitted the chair of state she had been sitting in, and was in her favourite place on a low stool on the hearth-rug.  She was more kneeling than sitting.  The fire-light played on her sweet face, so young and girlish still in its outlines, on her pretty hands clasped on her knees, on her arms which glittered with pearls, on the pearls that rested on her neck.  Lionel stood on the other side of the hearth-rug, leaning, as usual, on the mantel-piece.

At least five minutes passed in silence.  And then Lucy raised her eyes to his.

“Was it a joke, what you said to John Massingbird—­about leaving Deerham?”

“It was sober earnest, Lucy.  I shall go as soon as I possibly can now.”

“But why?” she presently asked.

“I should have left, as you heard me say, after Mrs. Verner’s death, but for one or two considerations.  Decima very much wished me to remain until her marriage; and—­I did not see my way particularly clear to embark in a new course of life.  I do not see it yet.”

“Why should you go?” asked Lucy.

“Because I—­because it is expedient that I should, for many reasons,” he answered.

“You do not like to remain subservient to John Massingbird?”

“It is not that.  I have got over that.  My prospects have been so utterly blighted, Lucy, that I think some of the old pride of the Verner race has gone out of me.  I do not see a chance of getting anything to do half as good as this stewardship—­as he but now called it—­under John Massingbird.  But I shall try at it.”

“What shall you try, do you think?”

“I cannot tell.  I should like to get something abroad; I should like to go to India.  I do not suppose I have any real chance of getting an appointment there; but stopping in Deerham will certainly not bring it to me:  that, or anything else.”

Lucy’s lips had parted.  “You will not think of going to India now!” she breathlessly exclaimed.

“Indeed I do think of it, Lucy.”

“So far off as that!”

The words were uttered with a strange sound of pain.  Lionel passed his hand over his brow, the action betokening pain quite as great as Lucy’s tone.  Lucy rose from her seat and stood near him, her thoughtful face upturned.

“What is left for me in England?” he resumed.  “What am I here?  A man without home, fortune, hope.  I have worse than no prospects.  The ceremony at which we have been assisting this day seems to have brought the bare facts more palpably before me in all their naked truth.  Other men can have a home, can form social ties to bless it.  I cannot.”

“But why?” asked Lucy, her lips trembling.

"Why! Can you ask it, Lucy?  There are moments—­and they are all too frequent—­when a fond vision comes over me of what my future might be; of the new ties I might form, and find the happiness in, that—­that I did not find in the last.  The vision, I say, comes all too frequently for my peace of mind, when I realise the fact that it can never be realised.”