f so, he beat
the temptation down. All men would not have been so forbearing.

"Sibylla, I have told you truth," he simply said.

"Which is as much as to say that Fred told----" she was vehemently
beginning when the words were stopped by the entrance of John
Massingbird. John, caught in the shower near Deerham Court, made no
scruple of running to it for shelter, and was in time to witness
Sibylla's angry tones and inflamed face.

What precisely happened Lionel could never afterwards recall. He
remembered John's free and easy salutation, "What's the row?"--he
remembered Sibylla's torrent of words in answer. As little given to
reticence or delicacy in the presence of her cousin, as she had been in
that of Lucy Tempest, she renewed her accusation of her husband with
regard to Rachel: she called on him--John--to bear testimony that Fred
was truthful. And Lionel remembered little more until he saw Sibylla
lying back gasping, the blood pouring from her mouth.

John Massingbird--perhaps in his eagerness to contradict her as much as
in his regard to make known the truth--had answered her all too
effectually before Lionel could stop him. Words that burned into the
brain of Sibylla Verner, and turned the current of her life's pulses.

It was her husband of that voyage, Frederick Massingbird, who had
brought the evil upon Rachel, who had been with her by the pond that
night.

As the words left John Massingbird's lips, she rose up, and stood
staring at him. Presently she essayed to speak, but not a sound issued
from her drawn lips. Whether passion impeded her utterance, or startled
dismay, or whether it may have been any physical impediment, it was
evident that she could not get the words out.

Fighting her hands on the empty air, fighting for breath or for speech,
so she remained for a passing space; and then the blood began to trickle
from her mouth. The excitement had caused her to burst a blood-vessel.

Lionel crossed over to her: her best support. He held her in his arms,
tenderly and considerately, as though she had never given him an
unwifely word. Stretching out his other hand to the bell, he rang it
loudly. And then he looked at Mr. Massingbird.

"Run for your life," he whispered. "Get Jan here."

CHAPTER LXXXII.

TRYING ON WREATHS.

The months went on, and Deerham was in a commotion: not the Clay Lane
part of it, of whom I think you have mostly heard, but that more refined
if less useful portion, re