“I am happy to see you, Mrs. Verner,” she said, with stately courtesy.  “I hope you will make yourself at home.”

They all went together into the drawing-room, in a crowd, as it were.  Lucy was there, dressed also.  She came up with a smile on her young and charming face, and welcomed Sibylla.

“It is nearly dinner-time,” said Decima to Sibylla.  “Will you come with me upstairs, and I will show you the arrangements for your rooms.  Lionel, will you come?”

She led the way upstairs to the pretty sitting-room with its blue-and white furniture, hitherto called “Miss Decima’s room”; the one that Lionel had sat in when he was growing convalescent.

“Mamma thought you would like a private sitting-room to retire to when you felt disposed,” said Decima.  “We are only sorry it is not larger.  This will be exclusively yours.”

“It is small,” was the not very gracious reply of Sibylla.

“And it is turning you out of it, Decima!” added Lionel.

“I did not use it much,” she answered, proceeding to another room on the same floor.  “This is your bedroom, and this the dressing-room,” she added, entering a spacious apartment and throwing open the door of a smaller one which led out of it.  “We hope that you will find everything comfortable.  And the luggage that you don’t require to use can be carried upstairs.”

Lionel had been looking round, somewhat puzzled.  “Decima! was not this Lucy’s room?”

“Lucy proposed to give it up to you,” said Decima.  “It is the largest room we have; the only one that has a dressing-room opening from it, except mamma’s.  Lucy has gone to the small room at the end of the corridor.”

“But it is not right for us to turn out Lucy,” debated Lionel.  “I do not like the idea of it.”

“It was Lucy herself who first thought of it, Lionel.  I am sure she is glad to do anything she can to render you and Mrs. Verner comfortable.  She has been quite anxious to make it look nice, and moved nearly all the things herself.”

“It does look comfortable,” acquiesced Lionel as he stood before the blaze of the fire, feeling grateful to Decima, to his mother, to Lucy, to all of them.  “Sibylla, this is one of your fires; yea like a blaze.”

“And Catherine will wait upon you, Mrs. Verner,” continued Decima.  “She understands it.  She waited on mamma for two years before Therese came.  Should you require your hair done, Therese will do that; mamma thinks Catherine would not make any hand at it.”

She quitted the room as she spoke, and closed the door, saying that she would send up Catherine then.  Lionel had his eyes fixed on the room and its furniture; it was really an excellent room—­spacious, lofty, and fitted up with every regard to comfort as well as to appearance.  In the old days it was Jan’s room, and Lionel scarcely remembered to have been inside it since; but it looked very superior now to what it used to look then.  Lady Verner had never troubled herself to improvise superfluous decorations for Jan.  Lionel’s chief attention was riveted on the bed, an Arabian, handsomely carved, mahogany bed, with white muslin hangings, lined with pink, matching with the window-curtains.  The hangings were new; but he felt certain that the bed was the one hitherto used by his mother.