er innocently suffer for the sins of her forefathers.

Of course there were honorable exceptions to this general and unmerited
reprobation of a guiltless young creature, but these exceptions were
mostly among Sybil's own set, and were too few to have any force against
the overwhelming weight of public sentiment.

And it was the general belief that, if the Governor should outrage
public opinion by pardoning Sybil Berners, he would be politically
ruined. Sybil Berners could not be permitted to live. She must die
before the Governor could be re-elected by the people. And the election
was coming on in the ensuing November.

Would he purchase success by the sacrifice of this young sufferer's
life?

Ah! her best friends, asking themselves this question, were forced to
answer, "Yes!"

This state of affairs had a most depressing effect upon Sybil's husband,
especially as he had sustained a great loss in the departure of her
zealous advocate, Ishmael Worth.

The young lawyer, soon after he had brought down Sybil's respite from
the Governor, had been called away on business of the utmost importance,
and had eventually sailed for Europe. He had gone, however, with the
most confident expectations of her liberation.

How these expectations were destined to be defeated, it was now plain to
see.

It required all Mr. Berners' powers of self-control to wear a calm
demeanor in the presence of his unsuspicious wife. He had carefully kept
from the cell every copy of a news-paper that contained any allusion to
the condemned prisoner and her circumstances, and he did this to keep
Beatrix, as well as Sybil, ignorant of the impending doom; for he wished
Beatrix to preserve in Sybil's presence the cheerful countenance that
she never could wear if she should discover the thunder-cloud of
destruction that lowered darker and heavier, day by day, over the head
of her doomed companion.

But Sybil herself was losing her good spirits. The autumn had set in
very early; and though now it was but October, the weather was too cool
and often also too damp to make it prudent for the poor prisoner to
spend so many hours in the prison garden as she had lately been
permitted to do. She sat much in her cell, sad, silent, and brooding.

"What is the matter with you, my darling?" inquired Beatrix Pendleton
one day, when they sat together in the cell, Beatrix sewing diligently
on an infant's robe, and Sybil, with her neglected needle-work lying on
her