"What!" echoed Sybil, her crimson lips breathlessly apart--her dark eyes
dilated.

"Love, you have invited a perfect stranger, casually met at a hotel--a
gambler's wife, even by her own showing, an adventuress by all other
appearances, to come and take up her abode with us for an indefinite
length of time!"

Sybil's mouth opened, and her eyes dilated with an almost comical
expression of dismay. She had not a word to say in self-defence!

"Do not think I blame you, dear, warm, imprudent heart! I only wonder at
you, and--adore you!" he said, earnestly pressing her to his bosom.

"Oh, but you would have done as I did, if you had seen her distress!"
pleaded Sybil, recovering her powers of speech.

"But could you not have helped her without inviting her home with us?"

"But how?" inquired Sybil.

"Could you not have paid her board? or lent her money?"

"Oh, Lyon! Lyon!" said Sybil, slowly shaking her head and looking up in
his face with a heavenly benevolence beaming through her own. "Oh, Lyon!
it was not a boarding-house she wanted, it was a _refuge_, a home with
friends! But I am very sorry if this displeases you."

"Dear, impetuous, self-forgetting child! I am not so impious as to find
fault with you."

"But you do not like the lady's coming."

"I should not like any visitor coming to stay with us and prevent our
_tete-a-tete_," said Lyon, gravely.

"I thought of that too, dear, and with a pang of selfish regret; for of
course I would much rather that you and I should have our dear old home
to ourselves, than that any stranger should share it with us. But then,
oh, dearest Lyon, I reflected that we are so rich and happy in our home
and our love, and she is so poor and sorrowful in her exile and
desertion, that we might afford to comfort her from the abundance of our
blessings," said Sybil, earnestly.

"My angel wife! you are worthier than I, and your will shall be done,"
he gravely replied.

"Not so, dear Lyon! But when you see this lady in her beauty and her
sorrow, you also will admire and pity her, and you will be glad that she
is coming to the refuge of our home."

"I may be so," replied Mr. Berners with an arch smile, "but how will
your proud neighbors receive this questionable stranger?"

The stately little head was lifted in an instant, and--

"My 'proud neighbors' well know that whom Sybil Berners protects with
her friendship is peer with the proudest among them!" she said, with a
hauteur no