“Part of the revenues of Verner’s Pride ought to have been hers years ago: and they were not.”
“If my husband had lived—if he had left me a little child—Verner’s Pride would have been his and mine, and never yours at all.”
“Hush, Sibylla! You don’t know how these allusions hurt me,” he interrupted, in a tone of intense pain.
“They are true,” said Sibylla.
“But not—forgive me, my dear, for saying it—not the less unseemly.”
“Why do you grumble at me, then?”
“I do not grumble,” he answered, in a kind tone. “Your interests are mine, Sibylla, and mine are yours. I only tell you the fact—and a fact it is—that our income will not stand these heavy calls upon it. Were I to show you how much you have spent in dress since we married,—what with Paris, London, and Hartburg,—the sum total would frighten you.”
“Why do you keep the sum total?” resentfully asked Sibylla. “Why do you add it up?”
“I must keep my accounts correctly. My uncle taught me that.”
“I am sure he did not teach you to grumble at me,” she rejoined. “I look upon Verner’s Pride as mine, more than yours: if it had not been for the death of my husband, you would never have had it.”
Inexpressibly vexed—vexed beyond the power to answer, for he would not trust himself to answer—Lionel prepared to quit the room. He began to wish he had not had Verner’s Pride, if this was to be its domestic peace. Sibylla petulantly threw the French book from her lap upon the table, and it fell down with its pages open.
Lionel’s eyes caught its title, and a flush, not less deep than the preceding flush darkened his brow. He laid his open palm upon the page with an involuntary movement, as if he would guard it from the eyes of his wife. That she should be reading that notorious work!
“Where did you get this?” he cried. “It is not a fit book for you.”
“There’s nothing the matter with the book as far as I have gone.”
“Indeed you must not read it! Pray don’t, Sibylla! You will be sorry for it afterwards.”
“How do you know it is not a fit book?”
“Because I have read it.”
“There! You have read it! And you would like to deny the pleasure to me! Don’t say you are never selfish.”
“Sibylla! What is fit for me to read, may be most unfit for you. I read the book when I was a young man: I would not read it now. Is it Benoite’s?” he inquired, seeing the name in the first page.
“Yes it is.”
Lionel closed the book.
“Promise me, Sibylla, that you will not attempt to read more of it. Give it her back at once, and tell her to send it out of the house, or to keep it under lock and key while it remains within it.”
Sibylla hesitated.
“Is it so very hard a promise?” he tenderly asked. “I would do a great deal more for you.”
“Yes, Lionel, I will promise,” she replied, a better feeling coming over her. “I will give it her back now. Benoite!”
She called loudly. Benoite heard, and came in.
“Mr. Verner says this is not a nice book. You may take it away.”
Mademoiselle Benoite advanced with a red face and took the book.
“Have you anymore such books?” inquired Lionel, looking at her.
“No, sir, I not got one other,” hardily replied she.
“Have the goodness to put this one away. Had your mistress been aware of the nature of the book, she had not suffered you to produce it.”
Mademoiselle went away, her skirts jerking. Lionel bent down to his wife.
“You know that it pains me to find fault, Sibylla,” he fondly whispered. “I have ever your welfare and happiness at heart. More anxiously, I think, than you have mine.”
He went back to his letters and papers. Later in the day he strolled out, and met the shooting-party coming home. After congratulating them on their good sport, he was turning home with them, when the gamekeeper intimated that he should be glad to speak a word to him in private. Upon which Lionel let the gentlemen go on.
“What is it, Broom?” asked he.
“I’m much afeared, sir, if things are not altered, that there’ll be murder committed some night,” answered Broom, without circumlocution.
“I hope not,” replied Lionel. “Are you and the poachers again at issue?”
“It’s not about the poachers, hang ’em! It’s about Robin Frost, sir. What on earth have come to him I can’t conceive. This last few nights he have took to come prowling out with a gun. He lays himself down in the copse, or a ditch, or the open field—no matter where—and there he stops, on the watch, with his gun always pointed.”
“On the watch for what?” asked Lionel.
“He best knows himself, sir. He’s going quite cracked, it’s my belief; he have been half-way to it this long while. Sometimes he’s travelling through the brushwood on all fours, the gun ever pointed; but mostly he’s posted on the watch. He’ll get shot for a poacher, or some of the poachers will shoot him, as sure as it’s a gun that he carries.”
“What can be his motive?” mused Lionel.
“I’m inclined to think, sir, though he is Robin Frost, that he’s after the birds,” boldly returned Broom.
“Then rely upon it that you think wrong, Broom,” rebuked Lionel. “Robin Frost would no more go out poaching, than I should go out thieving.”
“I saw him trailing along last night in the moonlight, sir. I saw his old father come up and talk to him, urging him to go home, as it seemed to me. But he couldn’t get him; and the old man had to hobble back without Robin. Robin stopped in his cold berth on the ground.”
