"Whether she remembers or not, will she expect to see _me_ in such a house, in such a position as this?
It is at these seasons, when people are coming here, who know what I have been and ought to be, that I feel all the humiliation of my poverty.

Lucy Tempest is nineteen." Lionel Verner knew that it was of no use to argue with his mother, when she began upon that most unsatisfactory topic, her position; which included what she called her "poverty" and her "wrongs." Though, in truth, not a day passed but she broke out upon it.
"Lionel," she suddenly said.
He had been glancing over the pages of the book--a new work on India.

He laid it down as he had found it, and turned to her.
"What shall you allow me when you come into Verner's Pride ?" "Whatever you shall wish, mother.

You shall name the sum, not I.And if you name too modest a one," he added laughingly, "I shall double it.

But Verner's Pride must be your home then, as well as mine." "Never!" was the emphatic answer.