Cruel As The Grave Part 17

He rose to his feet in surprise and dismay.

"SYBIL! what is all this? Why have you destroyed the cards?"

"Why?" she gasped, pressing both hands upon her heart, as if to keep down its horrible throbbings. "Why? Because they are lies! _lies!_ LIES!"

"SYBIL! have you gone suddenly mad?" he cried, gazing at the "embodied storm" before him with increasing astonishment and consternation.

"No! I have suddenly come to my senses!" she gasped between the catches of her breath, for she could scarcely speak.

"You must calm yourself, and tell me what this means, my wife," said Lyon Berners, exerting a great control over himself, and pushing aside the last card he had written.

But she s.n.a.t.c.hed up that card, glanced at it fiercely, tore it in two, and threw the fragments far apart, exclaiming in bitter triumph:

"Not yet! oh! not yet! I am not dead yet! Nor have the halls and acres of my fathers pa.s.sed quite away from their daughter to the possession of a traitor and an ingrate."

He gazed upon her now in amazement and alarm. _Had_ she gone suddenly mad?

She stood there before him the incarnation of the fiercest and intensest pa.s.sion he had ever seen or imagined.

He went and took her in his arms, saying more gently than before:

"Sybil, what is it?"

She tried, harshly and cruelly, to break from him. But he held her in a fast, loving embrace, murmuring still:

"Sybil, you must tell me what troubles you?"

"What troubles me!" she furiously exclaimed. "Let me go, man! Your touch is a dishonor to me! Let me go!"

"But, dearest Sybil."

"Let me go, I say! What! will you use your _brute strength to hold me_?"

He dropped his arms, and left her free.

"No; I beg your pardon, Sybil. I thought you were my loving wife," he said.

"You were mistaken. I am not Rosa Blondelle!" she cried.

"Hush! hush! my dearest Sybil!" he muttered earnestly, as he went and closed and locked the parlor door, to save her from being seen by the servants in her present insane pa.s.sion.

But she swept past him like a storm, and laid her hand on the lock. She found it fast.

"Open, and let me pa.s.s," she cried.

"No, no, my dear Sybil. Remain here until you are calmer, and then tell me--"

"Let me out, I say!"

"But, dearest Sybil."

"What! would you _keep me a prisoner--by force_?" she cried, with a cruel sneer.

He unlocked the door and set it wide open.

"No, even though you are a lunatic, as I do believe. Go, and expose your condition, if you must. I cannot restrain you by fair means, and I will not by foul."

And Sybil swept from the room, but she did not expose herself. She fled away to that "chamber of desolation" where she had pa.s.sed so many agonizing hours, and threw herself, face downwards, upon the floor, and lay there in the collapse of utter despair.

Meanwhile Lyon Berners paced up and down the parlor floor.

CHAPTER XII.

"CRUEL AS THE GRAVE."

Go, when the hunter's hand hath wrung From forest cave her shrieking young, And calm the raging lioness; But soothe not--mock not my distress.--BYRON.

Lyon Berners was utterly perplexed and troubled. He could not in any way explain to himself the sudden and furious pa.s.sion of his wife.

Suddenly it occurred to him that it was in some way connected with the cards she had thrown into the fire. They were not all burned up. Some few had fallen scorched upon the hearth. These he gathered up and examined; and as he looked at one after another, his face expressed, in turn, surprise, dismay, and amus.e.m.e.nt. Then he burst out laughing. He really could not help doing so, serious as the subject was; for upon every single card, instead of Rosa Blondelle, he had written:

Mrs. ROSA BERNERS.

"Was there ever such a mischief of a mistake?" he exclaimed, as he ceased laughing and sat down by his table to consider what was to be done next.

"Poor Sybil! poor, dear, fiery-hearted child, it is no wonder! And yet, Heaven truly knows it was because I was thinking of _you_, and not of the owner of the cards, that I wrote that name upon them unconsciously,"

he said to himself, as he sat with his fine head bowed upon his hand, gravely reviewing the history of the last few days.

His eyes were opened now--not only to his wife's jealousy, but to his own thoughtless conduct in doing anything to arouse it.

In the innermost of his own soul he was so sure of the perfect integrity of his love for his wife, that it had never before occurred to him that _she_ could doubt it--that any unconscious act or thoughtless gallantry on his part could cause her to doubt it.

Now, however, he remembered with remorse that, of late, since the rising of the court, all his mornings and evenings had been spent exclusively in the company of the beautiful blonde. Any wife under such circ.u.mstances might have been jealous; but few could have suffered such agonies of wounded love as wrung the bosom of Sybil Berners,--of Sybil Berners, the last of a race in whose nature more of the divine and more of the infernal met than in almost any other race that ever lived on earth.

Her husband thought of all this now. He remembered what lovers and what haters the men and women of her house had been.

He recalled how, in one generation, a certain Reginald Berners, who was engaged to be married to a very lovely young lady, on one occasion found his betrothed and an imaginary rival sitting side by side, amusing themselves with what they might have considered a very harmless flirtation, when, transported with jealous fury, he slew the man before the very eyes of the girl. For this crime Reginald was tried, but for some inexplicable reason, acquitted; and he lived to marry the girl for whose sake he had imbrued his hands in a fellow-man's blood.

He recalled how, in another generation, one Agatha Berners, in a frenzy of jealousy, had stabbed her rival, and then thrown herself into the Black Lake. Fortunately neither of the attempted crimes had been consummated, for the wounded woman recovered, and the would-be suicide lived to wear out her days in a convent.

Reflecting upon these terrible outbursts of the family pa.s.sion, Lyon Berners became very much alarmed for Sybil.

He started up and went in search of her. He looked successively through the drawing-room, the dining-room, and library. Not finding her in any of these rooms, he ascended to the second floor and sought her in their own apartment. Still not finding her, his alarm became agony.