Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/614

 606 nearly touched hers, whispered in answer that he did not think there was a doubt of it.

Then Deborah did nerve herself to the task. On the departure of the vicar she started for Verner’s Pride and asked to see Sibylla. The servants would have shown her to the drawing-room, but she preferred to go up to Sibylla’s chamber. The company were yet in the dining-room.

How long Sibylla kept her waiting there, she scarcely knew. Sibylla was not in the habit of putting herself to inconvenience for her sisters. The message was taken to her—that Miss West waited in her chamber—as she entered the drawing-room. And there Sibylla let her wait. One or two more messages to the same effect were subsequently delivered: they produced no impression, and Deborah began to think she should not get to see her that night.

But Sibylla came up at length, and Deborah entered upon her task. Whether she accomplished it clumsily, or whether Sibylla’s ill-disciplined mind was wholly in fault, certain it is that there ensued a loud and unpleasant scene. The scene to which you were a witness. Scarcely giving herself time to take in more than the bare fact hinted at by Deborah—that her first husband was believed to be alive—not waiting to inquire a single particular, she burst out of the room and went shrieking down the stairs, flying into the arms of Lionel, who at that moment had entered.

Lionel could not speak comfort to her. Or, at the best, comfort of a most negative nature. He held her to him in the study, the door locked against intruders. They were somewhat at cross-purposes. Lionel supposed that the information had been imparted to her by Captain Cannonby; he never doubted but that she had been told Frederick Massingbird had returned and was on the scene; that he might come in any moment—even that very present one as they spoke—to put in his claim to her. Sibylla, on the contrary, did not think (what little she was capable of thinking) that Lionel had had previous information of the matter.

“What am I to do?” she cried, her emotion becoming hysterical. “Oh, Lionel! don’t you give me up!”

“I would have got here earlier had there been means,” he soothingly said, wisely evading all answer to the last suggestion. “I feared he would be telling you in my absence: better that you should have heard of it from me.”

She lifted her face to look at him. “Then you know it!”

“I have known it this day or two. My journey to-day—”

She broke out into a most violent fit of emotion, shrieking, trembling, clinging to Lionel, calling out at the top of her voice that she would not leave him. All his efforts were directed to stilling the noise. He implored her to be tranquil; to remember there were listeners around: he pointed out that, until the blow actually fell, there was no necessity for those listeners to be made cognisant of it. All that he could do for her protection and comfort, he would do, he earnestly said. And Sibylla subsided into a softer mood and cried quietly.

“I’d rather die,” she sobbed, “than have this disgrace brought upon me.”

Lionel put her into the large arm-chair, which remained in the study still: the old arm-chair of Mr. Verner. He stood by her and held her hands, his pale face, grave, sad, loving, bent towards her with the most earnest sympathy. She lifted her eyes to it, whispering:

“Will they say you are not my husband?”

“Hush, Sibylla! There are moments, even yet, when I deceive myself into a fancy that it may be somehow averted. I cannot understand how he can be alive. Has Cannonby told you whence the error arose?”

She did not answer. She began to shake again; she tossed back her golden hair. Some blue ribbons had been wreathed in it for dinner: she pulled them out and threw them on the ground, her hair partially falling with their departure.

“I wish I could have some wine?”

He moved to the door to get it for her. “Don’t you let her in, Lionel,” she called out as he unlocked it.

“Who?”

“That Deborah. I hate her now,” was the ungenerous remark.

Lionel opened the door, called to Tynn, and desired him to bring wine. “What time did Captain Cannonby get here?” he whispered, as he took it from the butler.

“Who, sir?” asked Tynn.

“Captain Cannonby.”

Tynn paused, like one who does not understand. “There’s no gentleman here of that name, sir. A Mr. Rushworth called to-day, and my mistress asked him to stay dinner. He is in the drawing-room now. There is no other stranger.”

“Has Captain Cannonby not been here at all?” reiterated Lionel. “He left London this morning to come.”

Tynn shook his head to express a negative. “He has not arrived, sir.”

Lionel went in again, his feelings undergoing a sort of revulsion, for there now peeped out a glimmer of hope. So long as the nearly certain conviction on Lionel’s mind was not confirmed by positive testimony—as he expected Captain Cannonby’s would be—he could not entirely lose sight of all hope. That he most fervently prayed the blow might not fall, might even now be averted, you will readily believe. Sibylla had not been to him the wife he had fondly hoped for; she provoked him every hour in the day; she appeared to do what she could, wilfully to estrange his affection. He was conscious of all this; he was all too conscious that his inmost love was another’s, not hers: but he lost sight of himself in anxiety for her: it was for her sake he prayed and hoped. Whether she was his wife by law, or not; whether she was loved or hated, Lionel’s course of duty lay plain before him now: to shield her, so far as he might be allowed, in all care and tenderness. He would have shed his last drop of blood to