re no better when
you get there," was the parting salutation of the old man.

He stood at the door, leaning on his stick, and watched Lionel down Clay
Lane. "A sun-stroke, for sure," repeated he, slowly turning in, as the
angle of the lane hid Lionel from his view.

CHAPTER XXIII.

DAYS AND NIGHTS OF PAIN.

In his darkened chamber at Deerham Court lay Lionel Verner. Whether it
was a sun-stroke, or whether it was but the commencement of a fever,
which had suddenly struck him down that day, certain it was, that a
violent sickness attacked him, and he lay for many, many days--days and
weeks as old Frost had called it--between life and death. Fever and
delirium struggled with life, which should get the mastery.

Very little doubt was there, that his state of mind increased the danger
of his state of body. How bravely Lionel had struggled to do battle with
his great anguish, he might scarcely have known himself, in all its full
intensity, save for this illness. He had loved Sibylla with the pure
fervour of feelings young and fresh. He could have loved her to the end
of life; he could have died for her. No leaven was mixed with his love,
no base dross; it was refined as the purest silver. It is only these
exalted, ideal passions, which partake more of heaven's nature than of
earth's, that _tell_ upon the heart when their end comes. Terribly had
it told upon Lionel Verner's. In one hour he had learned that Sibylla
was false to him, was about to become the wife of another. In his
sensitive reticence, in his shrinking pride, he had put a smiling face
upon it before the world. He had watched her marry Frederick
Massingbird, and had "made no sign." Deep, deep in his heart, fifty
fathom deep, had he pressed down his misery, passing his days in what
may be called a false atmosphere--showing a false side to his friends.
It seemed false to Lionel, the appearing what he was not. He was his
true self at night only, when he could turn, and toss, and groan out his
trouble at will. But, when illness attacked him, and he had no strength
of body to throw off his pain of mind, then he found how completely the
blow had shattered him. It seemed to Lionel, in his sane moments, in the
intervals of his delirium, that it would be far happier to die, than to
wake up again to renewed life, to bear about within him that
ever-present sorrow. Whether the fever--it was not brain fever, though
bordering closely upon it--was the result of this