situation.  A consulship, or vice-consulship abroad, for instance. Any thing abroad.  Not to avoid the payment of his creditors, for whether abroad or at home, Lionel would be sure to pay them, if by dint of pinching himself he could find the means; but that he might run away from home and mortification, take his wife and make the best of her.  But consulships and other government appointments are more easily talked of than obtained; as any body who has tried for them under difficulties knows.  Moreover, although Lionel had never taken a prominent part in politics, the Verner interest had always been given against the government party, then in power.  He did not see his way at all clear before him; and he found that it was to be still further obstructed on another score.

After thinking and planning and plotting till his brain was nearly bewildered, he at length made up his mind to go to London, and see whether anything could be done.  With regard to his creditors there, he must lay the state of the case frankly before them, and say:  “Will you leave me my liberty, and wait?  You will get nothing by putting me in prison, for I have no money of my own, and no friend to come forward and advance it to clear me.  Give me time, accord me my liberty, and I will endeavour to pay you off by degrees.”  It was, at any rate, a straightforward mode of going to work, and Lionel determined to adopt it.  Before mentioning it to his wife, he spoke to Lady Verner.

And then occurred the obstruction.  Lady Verner, though she did not oppose the plan, declined to take charge of Sibylla, or to retain her in her house during Lionel’s absence.

“I could not take her with me,” said Lionel.  “There would be more objections to it than one.  In the first place, I have not the means; in the second—­”

He came to an abrupt pause, and turned the words off.  He had been about incautiously to say, “She would most likely, once in London, run me into deeper debt.”  But Lionel had kept the fact of her having run him into debt at all, a secret in his own breast.  Whatever may have been his wife’s faults and failings, he did not make it his business to proclaim them to the world.  She proclaimed enough herself, to his grievous chagrin, without his helping to do it.

“Listen, Lionel,” said Lady Verner.  “You know what my feeling always was with regard to your wife.  A closer intercourse has not tended to change that feeling, or to lessen my dislike of her.  Now you must forgive my saying this; it is but a passing allusion.  Stay on with me as long as you like; stay on for ever, if you will, and she shall stay; but if you leave, she must leave.  I should be sorry to have her here, even for a week, without you.  In fact, I would not.”

“It would be quite impossible for me to take her to London,” deliberated Lionel.  “I can be there alone at a very trifling cost; but a lady involves so much expense.  There must be lodgings, which are dear; and living, which is dear; and attendance; and—­and—­many other sources of outlay.”