Outside in the hall stood Catherine, waiting for him.
"Miss Verner has met with a little accident and hurt her foot, sir," she whispered.

"She can't walk." "Not walk!" exclaimed Lionel.

"Where is she ?" "She is in the store-room, sir; where it happened." Lionel went to the store-room, a small boarded room at the back of the hall.

A young lady sat there; a very pretty white foot in a wash-hand basin of warm water, and a shoe and stocking lying; near, as if hastily thrown off.
"Why, Decima! what is this ?" [Illustration: "Why, Decima! what is this ?"] She lifted her face.

A face whose features were of the highest order of beauty, regular as if chiselled from marble, and little less colourless.
But for the large, earnest, dark-blue eyes, so full of expression, it might have been accused of coldness.