had been left by him to Lady Verner and to her children.  Stephen Verner would have remedied this.  On the arrival of Lady Verner, he had proposed to pay over to her yearly a certain sum out of the estate; but Lady Verner, smarting under disappointment, under the sense of injustice, had flung his proposal back to him.  Never, so long as he lived, she told Stephen Verner, passionately, would she be obliged to him for the worth of a sixpence in money or in kind.  And she had kept her word.

Her income was sadly limited.  It was very little besides her pay as a colonel’s widow; and to Lady Verner it seemed less than it really was, for her habits were somewhat expensive.  She took this house, Deerham Court, then to be let without the land, had it embellished inside and out—­which cost her more than she could afford, and had since resided in it.  She would not have rented under Mr. Verner had he paid her to do it.  She declined all intercourse with Verner’s Pride; had never put her foot over its threshold.  Decima went once in a way; but she, never.  If she and Stephen Verner met abroad, she was coldly civil to him; she was indifferently haughty to Mrs. Verner, whom she despised in her heart for not being a lady.  With all her deficiencies, Lady Verner was essentially a gentlewoman—­not to be one amounted in her eyes to little less than a sin.  No wonder that she, with her delicate beauty of person, her quiet refinements of dress, shrank within herself as she swept past poor Mrs. Verner, with her great person, her crimson face, and her flaunting colours!  No wonder that Lady Verner, smarting under her wrongs, passed half her time giving utterance to them; or that her smooth face was acquiring premature wrinkles of discontent.  Lionel had a somewhat difficult course to steer between Verner’s Pride and Deerham Court, so as to keep friends with both.

Lucy Tempest appeared at the door.  She stood there hesitating, after the manner of a timid school-girl.  They turned round and saw her.

“If you please, may I come in?”

Lady Verner could have sighed over the deficiency of “style,” or confidence, whichever you may like to term it.  Lionel laughed, as he crossed the room to throw the door wider by way of welcome.

She wore a light shot pink dress of peculiar material, a sort of cashmere, very fine and soft.  Looking at it one way it was pink, the other, mauve; the general shade of it was beautiful.  Lady Verner could have sighed again:  if the wearer was deficient in style, so also was the dress.  A low body and short sleeves, perfectly simple, a narrow bit of white lace alone edging them:  nothing on her neck, nothing on her arms, no gloves.  A child of seven might have been so dressed.  Lady Verner looked at her, her brow knit, and various thoughts running through her brain.  She began to fear that Miss Tempest would require so much training as would give her trouble.

Lucy saw the look, and deemed that her attire was wrong.