oring the romantic glens of the Black Valley, or wandering along the
picturesque banks of the Black River. Or if the weather happened to be
inclement, Mr. Berners and Mrs. Blondelle would sit in the library
together, deep in German mysticism or French sentiment.

Every evening Rosa sat at the grand piano, singing for him the most
impassioned songs from the German and Italian operas; and Lyon hung over
her chair turning her music, and enraptured with her beauty.

Ah! Rosa Blondelle! vain and selfish and shallow coquette! Trifle, if
you must, with any other man's love, with any other woman's peace; but
you had better invade the lair of the lioness, and seize her cubs--you
had better walk blindfold upon the abyss of Hades, than come between
Sybil Berners and her husband!

For Sybil saw it all! and not only as any other woman might have seen
it, just as it was, but as the jealous wife did--with vast exaggerations
and awful forebodings.

They did not suspect how much she knew, or how much more she imagined.
Before them the refined instincts of the lady still kept down the angry
passions of the woman.

Whenever her emotions were about to overcome her, she slipped away, not
to her own room, where she was liable to interruption, but far up into
the empty attics of the old house, where, in some corresponding chamber
of desolation, she gave way to such storms of anguish and despair as
leave the deepest

"Traces on heart and brain."

And after an hour or two she would return to the drawing-room, whence
she had never been missed by the pair of sentimentalists, who had been
too much absorbed in each other, and in Mozart or Beethoven, to notice
her absence.

And while all unconscious of her, they continued their musical
flirtation, she would sit with her back to the light, toying with her
crochet-work and listening to Rosa's songs.

She was still as a volcano before it bursts forth to bury cities under
its burning lava flood!

Why did she not, in the sacred privacy of their mutual apartment appeal
to the better nature of her husband by telling him how much his
flirtation with their guest pained her, his wife? Or else, why had she
not spoken plainly with her guest?

Why? Because Sybil Berners had too much pride and too little faith to do
the one or the other. She could not stoop to plead with her husband for
the love that she thought he had withdrawn from her; still less could
she bend to tell her guest how much his