"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. "Quite true." "But I thought it was yours--after Mr. Verner." "I thought so too, until to-day," replied Lionel. "It ought to have been mine." "What shall you do without it?" "What, indeed!" he answered. "From being a landed country gentleman--as people have imagined me--I go down to a poor fellow who must work for his bread and cheese before he eats it. Your eyes are laughing, Miss Lucy, but it is true." "Bread and cheese costs nothing," said she. "No? And the plate you put it on, and the knife you eat it with, and the glass of beer to help it go down, and the coat you wear during the repast, and the room it's served in?--they cost something, Miss Lucy." Lucy laughed. "I think you will always have enough bread and cheese," said she. "You look as though you would." Decima turned to them. She had stood buried in a reverie, until the light tone of Lionel aroused her from it. "_Which_ is real, Lionel? This joking, or that you have lost Verner's Pride?" "Both," he answered. "I am disinherited from Verner's Pride; better perhaps that I should joke over it, than cry." "What will mamma do? What will mamma do?" breathed Decima. "She has so counted upon it. And what will you do, Lionel?" "Decima!" came forth at this moment from the opposite room, in the imperative voice of Lady Verner. Decima turned in obedience to it, her step less light than usual. Lucy addressed Lionel. "One day at the rectory there came a gipsy woman, wanting to tell our fortunes; she accosted us in the garden. Mr. Cust sent her away, and she was angry, and told him his star was not in the ascendant. I think it must be the case at present with your star, Mr. Verner." Lionel smiled. "Yes, indeed." "It is not only one thing that you are losing; it is more. First, that pretty girl whom you loved; then, Mr. Verner; and now, Verner's Pride. I wish I knew how to comfort you."