not; and the lightning killed a man. Oh, Lionel, I
shall never forget it! I saw him carried past; I saw his face! Since
then I have felt ready to die myself with the fear."

She turned her face, and hid it upon his bosom. Lionel did not attempt
to soothe the _fear_; he knew that for such fear time alone is the only
cure. He whispered words of soothing to _her_; he stroked fondly her
golden hair. In these moments, when she was gentle, yielding, clinging
to him for protection, three parts of his old love for her would come
back again. The lamp, which had been turned on to its full blaze of
light, was behind them, so that they might have been visible enough to
anybody standing in the nearer portion of the grounds.

"Captain Cannonby went away with Frederick Massingbird," observed
Lionel, approaching by degrees to the questions he wished to ask. "Did
they start together?"

"Yes. Don't talk about it, Lionel."

"My dear wife, I must talk about it," he gravely answered. "You have
always put me off in this manner, so that I know little or nothing of
the circumstances. I have a reason for wishing to become cognisant of
those past particulars. Surely," he added, a shade of deeper feeling in
his tone, "at this distance of time it cannot be so very painful to your
feelings to speak of Frederick Massingbird. _I_ am by your side."

"What is the reason that you wish to know?"

"A little matter that regarded him and Cannonby. Was Cannonby with him
when he died?"

Sibylla, subdued still, yielded to the wish as she would probably have
yielded at no other time.

"Of course he was with him. They were but a day's journey from
Melbourne. I forget the name of the place; a sort of small village or
settlement, I believe, where the people halted that were going to, or
returning from, the diggings. Frederick was taken worse as they got
there, and in a few hours he died."

"Cannonby remaining with him?"

"Yes. I am sure I have told you this before, Lionel. I told it to you on
the night of my return."

He was aware she had. He could not say: "But I wish to press you upon
the points; to ascertain beyond doubt that Frederick Massingbird did
really die; that he is not living." "Did Cannonby stay until he was
buried?" he asked aloud.

"Yes."

"You are sure of this?"

Sibylla looked at him curiously. She could not think why he was
recalling this; why want to know it?

"I am sure of it only so far as that Captain Cannonby told me so,"