“Lionel,” she suddenly said.

He had been glancing over the pages of the book—­a new work on India.  He laid it down as he had found it, and turned to her.

“What shall you allow me when you come into Verner’s Pride?”

“Whatever you shall wish, mother.  You shall name the sum, not I. And if you name too modest a one,” he added laughingly, “I shall double it.  But Verner’s Pride must be your home then, as well as mine.”

“Never!” was the emphatic answer.  “What! to be turned out of it again by the advent of a young wife?  No, never, Lionel.”

Lionel laughed—­constrainedly this time.

“I may not be bringing home a young wife for this many and many a year to come.”

“If you never brought one, I would not make my home at Verner’s Pride,” she resumed, in the same impulsive voice.  “Live in the house by favour, that ought to have been mine by right?  You would not be my true son to ask me, Lionel.  Catherine, is that you?” she called out, as the movements of some one were heard in the ante-room.

A woman-servant put in her head.

“My lady?”

“Tell Miss Verner that Mr. Lionel is here?”

“Miss Verner knows it, my lady,” was the woman’s reply.  “She bade me ask you, sir,” addressing Lionel, “if you’d please to step out to her.”

“Is she getting ready, Catherine?” asked Lady Verner.

“I think not, my lady.”

“Go to her, Lionel, and ask her if she knows the time.  A pretty thing if you arrive at the station after the train is in!”

Lionel quitted the room.  Outside in the hall stood Catherine, waiting for him.

“Miss Verner has met with a little accident and hurt her foot, sir,” she whispered.  “She can’t walk.”

“Not walk!” exclaimed Lionel.  “Where is she?”

“She is in the store-room, sir; where it happened.”

Lionel went to the store-room, a small boarded room at the back of the hall.  A young lady sat there; a very pretty white foot in a wash-hand basin of warm water, and a shoe and stocking lying; near, as if hastily thrown off.

“Why, Decima! what is this?”

[Illustration:  “Why, Decima! what is this?”]

She lifted her face.  A face whose features were of the highest order of beauty, regular as if chiselled from marble, and little less colourless.  But for the large, earnest, dark-blue eyes, so full of expression, it might have been accused of coldness.  In sleep, or in perfect repose, when the eyelids were bent, it looked strangely cold and pure.  Her dark hair was braided; and she wore a dress something the same in colour as Lady Verner’s.

“Lionel, what shall I do?  And to-day of all days!  I shall be obliged to tell mamma; I cannot walk a step.”

“What is the injury?  How did you meet with it?”

“I got on a chair.  I was looking for some old Indian ornaments that I know are in that high cupboard, wishing to put them in Miss Tempest’s room, and somehow the chair tilted with me, and I fell upon my foot.  It is only a sprain; but I cannot walk.”