"Very bad, Decima. Or I should not have sent you away while I told it."
"I suppose there's nothing left for mamma, or for Jan?"
"Mamma did not expect anything left for her, Decima. Don't go away, Lucy," he added, arresting Lucy Tempest, who, with good taste, was leaving them alone. "Stay and hear how poor I am; all Deerham knows it by this time."
Lucy remained. Decima, her beautiful features a shade paler than usual, turned her serene eyes on Lionel. She little thought what was coming.
"Verner's Pride is left away from me, Decima."
"Left away from you! From you?"
"Frederick Massingbird inherits. I am passed over."
"Oh, Lionel!" The words were not uttered angrily, passionately, as Lady Verner's had been; but in a low, quiet voice, wrung from her, seemingly, by intense inward pain.
"And so there will be some additional trouble for you in the housekeeping line," went on Lionel, speaking gaily, and ignoring all the pain at his heart. "Turned out of Verner's Pride, I must come to you here—at least, for a time. What shall you say to that, Miss Lucy?"
Lucy was looking up at him gravely, not smiling in the least. "Is it true that you have lost Verner's Pride?" she asked.