“She was so fatigued, so low-spirited, that I believed she was scarcely conscious where she drove,” he returned.  “I am certain that the idea of there being any impropriety in it never once crossed her mind.”

Lady Verner drew her shawl around her with a peculiar movement.  If ever action expressed scorn, that one did—­scorn of Sibylla, scorn of her conduct, scorn of Lionel’s credulity in believing in her.  Lionel read it all.  Happening to glance across the table, he caught the eyes of Lucy Tempest fixed upon him with an open expression of wonder.  Wonder at what?  At his believing in Sibylla?  It might be.  With all Lucy’s straightforward plainness, she would have been one of the last to storm Lionel’s abode, and take refuge in it.  A retort, defending Sibylla, had been upon Lionel’s tongue, but that gaze stopped it.

“How long does she purpose honouring Verner’s Pride with her presence, and keeping you out of it?” resumed Lady Verner.

“I do not know what her plans for the present may be,” he answered, his cheeks burning at the thought of the avowal he had to make—­that her future plans would be contingent upon his.  Not the least painful of the results which Lionel’s haste had brought in its train, was the knowledge of the shock it would prove to his mother, whom he so loved and reverenced.  Why had he not thought of it at the time?

Breakfast over, Lionel went out, a very coward.  A coward, in so far as that he had shrunk from making yet the confession.  He was aware that it ought to be done.  The presence of Decima and Lucy Tempest had been his mental excuse for putting off the unwelcome task.

But a better frame of mind came over him ere he had gone many paces from the door; better, at any rate, as regarded the cowardice.

“A Verner never shrank yet from his duty,” was his comment, as he bent his steps back again.  “Am I turning renegade?”

He went straight up to Lady Verner, and asked her, in a low tone, to grant him a minute’s private interview.  They had breakfasted in the room which made the ante-room to the drawing-room; it was their usual morning-room.  Lady Verner answered her son by stepping into the drawing-room.

He followed her and closed the door.  The fire was but just lighted, scarcely giving out any heat.  She slightly shivered, and requested him to stir it.  He did so mechanically—­wholly absorbed by the revelation he had to impart.  He remembered how she had once fainted at nearly the same revelation.

“Mother, I have a communication to make to you,” he began with desperate energy, “and I don’t know how to do it.  It will pain you greatly.  Nothing that I can think of, or imagine, would cause you so much pain.”

Lady Verner seated herself in her low violet-velvet chair, and looked composedly at Lionel.  She did not dread the communication very much.  He was secure in Verner’s Pride; what could there be that she need fear?  She no more cast a glance to the possibility of his marrying the widow of Frederick Massingbird, than she would have done to his marrying that gentleman’s wife.  Buried in this semi-security, the shock must be all the greater.