ir shading her burning cheeks.

"If you have been surprised or terrified into this engagement, loving
him not, will you give him up for me?" tenderly whispered Lionel.
"Not--you understand--if your love be his. In that case, I would not ask
it. But, without reference to myself at all, I doubt--and I have my
reasons for it--if Frederick Massingbird be worthy of you."

Was she wavering in her own mind? She stole a glance upward--at his
tall, fine form, his attractive face, its lineaments showing out in that
moment, all the pride of the Verners. A pride that mingled with love.

Lionel bent to her--

"Sibylla, if you love him I have no more to say; if you love me, avow
it, as I will then avow my love, my intentions, in the face of day.
Reflect before you speak. It is a solemn moment--a moment which holds
alike my destiny and yours in its hands."

A rush of blood to her heart, a rush of moisture to her forehead; for
Sibylla West was not wholly without feeling, and she knew, as Lionel
said, that it was a decision fraught with grave destiny. But Frederick
Massingbird was more to her than he was.

"I have given my promise. I cannot go from it," was her scarcely
breathed answer.

"May your falsity never come home to you!" broke from Lionel, in the
bitterness of his anguish. And he strode from the room without another
word or look, and quitted the house.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING.

Deerham could not believe the news. Verner's Pride could not believe it.
Nobody believed it, save Lady Verner, and she was only too thankful to
believe it and hug it. There was nothing surprising in Sibylla's
marrying her cousin Fred, for many had shrewdly suspected that the
favour between them was not altogether cousinly favour; but the surprise
was given to the hasty marriage. Dr. West vouchsafed an explanation. Two
of his daughters, aged respectively one year and two years younger than
Amilly, had each died of consumption, as all Deerham knew. On attaining
her twenty-fifth year, each one had shown rapid symptoms of the disease,
and had lingered but a few weeks. Sibylla was only one-and-twenty yet;
but Dr. West fancied he saw, or said he saw, grounds for fear. It was
known of what value a sea-voyage was in these constitutions; hence his
consent to the departure of Sibylla. Such was the explanation of Dr.
West.

"I wonder whether the stated 'fear of consumption' has been called up by
himself for the occasion?" w