from justice."

"Lyon, that poor child! If we ever go home again, we must adopt and
educate him."

"We will do so, Sybil."

"For, oh! Lyon, although I am entirely innocent of that most heinous
crime, and entirely incapable of it, yet, when I remember how my rage
burned against that poor woman only an hour before her death, I feel--I
feel as if I were half guilty of it! as if--Heaven pardon me!--I might,
in some moment of madness, have been wholly guilty of it! Lyon, I
shudder at myself!" cried Sybil, growing very pale.

"You should thank Heaven that you have been saved from such mortal sin,
dear wife, and also pray Heaven always to save you from your own fierce
passions," said Mr. Berners, very gravely.

"I have breathed that thanksgiving and that prayer with every breath I
have drawn. And I will continue to do so. But, oh! Lyon, all my
passions, all my sufferings grew out of my great love for you."

"I can well believe it, dear wife. And I myself have not been free from
blame; though in reality your jealousy was very causeless, Sybil."

"I know that now," said Sybil, sadly.

"And now, dearest, I would like to make 'a clean breast of it,' as the
sinners say, and tell you all--the whole 'head and front of my
offending' with that poor dead woman," said Mr. Berners, seating himself
on the floor beside his wife.

Sybil did not repel his offered confidence, for though her jealousy had
died a violent death, she was still very much interested in hearing his
confession.

Then Lyon Berners told her everything, up to the very last moment when
she had surprised them in the first and last kiss that had ever passed
between them.

"But in all, and through all, my heart, dear wife, was loyal in its love
to you," he concluded.

"I know that, dearest Lyon--I know that well," replied Sybil.

And with that tenderness towards the faults of the dead, which all
magnanimous natures share, she forbore to say, or even to think, how
utterly unprincipled had been the course of Rosa Blondelle from the
first to the last of their acquaintance with that vain and frivolous
coquette.

Sybil was now almost sinking with weariness. Lyon perceived her
condition, and said:

"Remain here, dear Sybil, while I go and try to collect some boughs and
leaves to make you a couch. The sun must have dried up the moisture by
this time."

And he went out and soon returned with his arms full of boughs, which he
spread upon the flagstones. Then he t