! for oh! if you should ever cease to love me, or even if you were
ever to love me _less_,--I--I dare not think what I should do!" she
muttered in a long, deep, shuddering tone.

"Sweet Sybil," he breathed, drawing her to his bosom and pressing warm
kisses on her crimson lips--"sweetest Sybil, it is not possible for the
human heart to love _more_ than I do, but I can never love you less!"

"I do believe you, dearest Lyon! With all my heart I do!--Yet--yet--"

"Yet what, sweet love?"

She lifted her face from his bosom and gazing intently in his eyes,
said:

"Yet, Lyon, if you knew the prayer that I never fail to put up, day and
night! What do you think it is for, dear Lyon?"

"I know; it is for Heaven's blessing to rest upon our wedded lives."

"Yes, my prayer is for that always, of course! but that is not what I
mean now! That is not the stronger, stronger prayer which I offer up
from the deeps of my spirit in almost an agony of supplication!"

"And what is that prayer, so awful in its earnestness, dear love?"

"Oh, Lyon! it is _that you may never love me less than now, or if you
should, that I may never live to know it_," she breathed with an
intensity of suppressed emotion that drew all the glowing color from her
crimson cheeks and lips and left them pale as marble.

"Why, you beautiful mad creature! You are a true daughter of your house!
A Berners of the burning heart! A Berners of the boiling blood! A
Berners of whom it has been said, that it is almost as fatal to be
loved, as to be hated, by one of them! Dear Sybil! never doubt my love;
never be jealous of me, if you would not destroy us both," he earnestly
implored.

"I do not doubt you, dearest Lyon; I am not jealous of you! What cause,
indeed, have I to be so? But--but----"

"But what, my darling?"

"--Ever since I have been in this house, a darkness and coldness and
weight has fallen upon my spirits, that I cannot shake off--a burden, as
of some impending calamity! And as there is no calamity that can
possibly affect me so much as the lessening of your love, I naturally
think most of that," she answered, with a heavy sigh.

"Dear love! this depression is only reaction! fatigue! the effect of
this damp, dull, dreary room! We will change all this!" said Lyon
Berners, cheerfully, as he pulled the bell-cord and rang a peal that
presently brought the waiter to his presence.

"Are our rooms ready?" shortly demanded Mr. Berners.

"Just this moment