"Lionel!" cried Lucy, turning her face full upon him in her earnestness, "how could she choose Frederick Massingbird, when she might have chosen you?"
"Tastes differ," said Lionel, speaking lightly, a thing he rarely did when with Lucy. "There's no accounting for them. Some time or other, Lucy, you may be marrying an ugly fellow with a wooden leg and red beard; and people will say, 'How could Lucy Tempest have chosen him?'"
Lucy coloured. "I do not like you to speak in that joking way, if you please," she gravely said.
"Heigh ho, Lucy!" sighed he. "Sometimes I fancy a joke may cheat me out of a minute's care. I wish I was well, and away from this place. In London I shall have my hands full, and can rub off the rust of old grievances with hard work."
"You will not like London better than Deerham."
"I shall like it ten thousand times better," impulsively answered Lionel. "I have no longer a place in Deerham, Lucy. That is gone."
"You allude to Verner's Pride?"
"Everything's gone that I valued in Deerham," cried Lionel, with the same impulse—"Verner's Pride amongst the rest. I would never stop here to see the rule of Fred Massingbird. Better that John had lived to take it, than that it should have come to him."
"Was John better than his brother?"
"He would have made a better master. He was, I believe, a better man. Not but that John had his faults, as we all have."