LXXXI.

A CRISIS IN SIBYLLA'S LIFE.

Sibylla Verner improved neither in health nor in temper. Body and mind
were alike diseased. As the spring had advanced, her weakness appeared
to increase; the symptoms of consumption became more palpable. She would
not allow that she was ill; she, no doubt, thought that there was
nothing serious the matter with her; nothing, as she told everybody, but
the vexing after Verner's Pride.

Dr. West had expressed an opinion that her irritability, which she could
neither conceal nor check, was the result of her state of health. He was
very likely right. One thing was certain; that since she grew weaker and
worse, this unhappy frame of mind had greatly increased. The whole
business of her life appeared to be to grumble, to be cross, snappish,
fretful. If her body was diseased, most decidedly her temper was also.
The great grievance of quitting Verner's Pride she made a plea for the
indulgence of every complaint under the sun. She could no longer gather
a gay crowd of visitors around her; she had lost the opportunity with
Verner's Pride; she could no longer indulge in unlimited orders for new
dresses and bonnets, and other charming adjuncts to the toilette,
without reference to how they were to be paid for; she had not a dozen
servants at her beck and call; and if she wanted to pay a visit, there
was no elegant equipage, the admiration of all beholders, to convey her.
She had lost all with Verner's Pride. Not a day--scarcely an
hour--passed, but one or other, or all of these vexations, were made the
subject of fretful, open repining. Not to Lady Verner--Sibylla would not
have dared to annoy her; not to Decima or to Lucy; but to her husband.
How weary his ear was, how weary his spirit, no tongue could tell. She
tried him in every way--she did nothing but find fault with him. When he
stayed out, she grumbled at him for staying, meeting him with reproaches
on his entrance; when he remained in, she grumbled at him. In her sad
frame of mind it was essential--there are frames of mind in which it
_is_ essential, as the medical men will tell you, where the sufferer
cannot help it--that she should have some object on whom to vent her
irritability. Not being in her own house, there was but her husband. He
was the only one sufficiently nearly connected with her to whom the
courtesies of life could be dispensed with; and therefore he came in for
it all. At Verner's Pride there would have been her ser