e of hers! My dear Sybil, you never did a better deed
than in asking this lovely lady to our house. She will be an invaluable
acquisition to our lonely fireside this winter."

"You did not use to think our fireside was lonely! You used to be very
jealous of our domestic privacy!" Sybil _thought_ to herself; but she
gave no expression to this thought. On the contrary, controlling
herself, and steadying her voice with an effort, she said smilingly:

"If you had met this 'lovely lady' before you married me, and had found
her also free, you would have made her your wife."

"I! No, indeed!" impulsively and most sincerely answered Lyon Berners,
as he raised his eyes in astonishment to the face of Sybil. But he could
see nothing there. Her face was in deep shadow, where she purposely kept
it to conceal its pallor and its tremor.

"But why, if you had met her before you married me, and found her free,
why should you not have made her your wife?" persisted Sybil.

"'Why?'--what a question! Because, in the first place dear Sybil, I
loved _you, you only_, long before I ever married you!" said Lyon
Berners in increasing surprise.

"But--if you had met her before you had ever seen me, you would have
loved and married her."

"No! On my honor, Sybil!"

"Yet you admire her so much!"

"Dear Sybil! I admire all things beautiful in nature and art, but I
don't want to marry all!"

"And are you sure that this beautiful Rosa Blondelle would not make you
a more suitable companion than I do?" she inquired.

His whole manner now changed. Turning towards her, he took both her
hands in his own, and looking gravely and sweetly in her face, he
answered:

"My wife! such questions between you and me ought never to arise, even
in jest. I hold the marriage relation always too sacred for such
trifling! And _our_ relations towards each other seem to me dearer,
sweeter, more sacred even, than those of most other married couples! No,
my own Sybil! Soul of my soul! there is no woman that I ever did, or
ever could prefer to you!" And he drew her to his bosom, and pressed her
there in all good faith and true love. And his grave and tender rebuke
did even more to tranquilize her jealousy than all his caresses had
done.

"I know it! I know it, my dear husband! But it is only when I feel how
imperfect, how unworthy of you, I am, that I ever have doubts!" she
murmured with a sigh of infinite relief.

CHAPTER X