Sibylla

“ No! my allegiance of duty has never swerved from you. So help me Heaven!"
"You can't swear to me that you don't love her?" was Sibylla's retort.
It appeared that he did not intend to swear it. He went and stood against the mantel-piece, in his old favourite attitude, leaning his elbow on it and his face upon his hand—a face that betrayed his inward pain. Sibylla began again: to tantalise him seemed a necessity of her life.
"I might have expected trouble when I consented to marry you. Rachel Frost's fate might have taught me the lesson."
"Stay," said Lionel, lifting his head. ”

“ Decima had hastened forward to welcome Sibylla. Decima was one, who, in her quiet way, was always trying to make the best of surrounding circumstances,—not for herself, but for others. Let things be ever so dark, she would contrive to extract out of them some little ray of brightness. Opposite as they were in person, in disposition she and Jan were true brother and sister. She came forward to the door, a glad smile upon her face, and dressed rather more than usual: it was one of her ways, the unwonted dress, of showing welcome and consideration to Sibylla. ”

“ Sibylla made no reply.
"You have never seen a look or heard a word pass between me and Lucy Tempest that was not of the most open nature, entirely compatible with her position, that of a modest and refined gentlewoman, and of mine, as your husband. I think you must be mad, Sibylla."
The words Jan had used. If such temperaments do not deserve the name of madness, they are near akin to it. Lionel spoke with emotion: it all but over-mastered him, and he went back to his place by the mantel-piece, his chest heaving. ”

“ Sibylla flung his arm from her. “Do you want to keep me as a beggar? I will have the ponies!”
He shook his head. “The subject is settled, Sibylla. If you cannot think for yourself, I must think for you. But it was not to speak of the ponies that I brought you here. What is it that you owe to Mrs. Duff?”
Sibylla’s colour heightened. “It is no business of yours, Lionel, what I owe her. There may be some little trifle or other down in her book. It will be time enough for you to concern yourself with my little petty debts when you are asked to pay them.” ”

“ Standing before the fire, her young, slender form habited in its black robes, was Sibylla. No one, looking at her, would have believed her to be a widow: partly from her youth, partly that she did not wear the widow’s dress. Her head was uncovered, and her fair curls fell, shading her brilliant cheeks. It has been mentioned that her chief beauty lay in her complexion: seen by candle-light, flushed as she was now, she was inexpressibly beautiful. A dangerous hour, a perilous situation for the yet unhealed heart of Lionel Verner. ”

“ Sibylla would not have dared to annoy her; not to Decima or to Lucy; but to her husband. How weary his ear was, how weary his spirit, no tongue could tell. She tried him in every way—she did nothing but find fault with him. When he stayed out, she grumbled at him for staying, meeting him with reproaches on his entrance; when he remained in, she grumbled at him. In her sad frame of mind, it was essential—there are frames of mind in which it is essential, as the medical men will tell you; where the sufferer cannot help it—that she should have some object on which to vent her irritability. ”

“ Knowing his thought and what his heart was towards her, Sibylla turned to him as a child turns simply from a hard to a loving face. Here was a life wanting her life, a love asking hers. She had always believed people when they said they loved and wanted her—why, she had believed even Grantley himself!—and was always convinced that their love for her was all they said it was. It was her instinct to believe that. She believed all—aye, more—about young Blake than he believed about himself, though he believed very much just now; and she would always have people all white or all black. ”

“ They can’t afford to buy themselves much, you know: the doctor keeps them so short,” added Jan.
“I would have brought them something, if I had thought of it; I would, indeed!” exclaimed Sibylla, in an accent of contrition. “Is it not a pity, Lionel?”
“I wish you had,” replied Lionel. “Can you give them nothing of what you have brought?”
“Well—I—must—consider,” hesitated Sibylla, who was essentially selfish. “The things are so beautiful; so expensive: they are scarcely suited to Deborah and Amilly.”
“Why not?” questioned Jan.
“You have not a bit of sense, Jan,” grumbled Sibylla. ”

“ Sibylla, I had far rather been stabbed than have heard it.”
“A fearful sum, truly, to be doled out of your coffers!” cried Sibylla, sarcastically. “You’ll never recover it, I should think!”
“Not that, not that,” was the reply of Lionel, his tone one of pain. “Sibylla! have you no sense of the fitness of things? Is it seemly for the mistress of Verner’s Pride to keep a poor woman, as Mrs. Duff is, out of her money; a humble shopkeeper who has to pay her way as she goes on?”
“I wish Fred had lived! ”

“ The Sibyls are of different ages, but all listen to angels who are whispering to them the words which they are to write. The composition is full of life, beauty, and nobility. These Sibyls remind me of a Sibylla which you ought to see, if you come to Rome. It is by Guercino and is in the museum of the Capitol, a figure of more solemn earnestness than those of Raphael, but with as profound a gaze, as nobly beautiful, as truly turned away from the world and fixed alone upon the eternal truth. ”

“ Grantley asked Sibylla. "Do you think I've no real intention of doing it?"
She looked up at him intently.
"You love yourself more than the boy, and your pride more than life or happiness," she said slowly. He frowned, but heard her without interruption. "So I think you might do it," she ended.
"Sibylla!" cried Blake, leaning forward again.
A gesture from her arrested his speech. He rose slowly to his feet and stood listening.
"I may be made a fool of. I don't make a fool of myself. If I pledge myself to you to do it, you know I shall do it, Sibylla?" ”

“ Why, Sibylla, what is the matter?”
Sibylla dashed the handkerchief off her brow as he advanced to her, and rose up, speaking vehemently. The sight of her husband appeared to have brought the climax to her temper.
“Where have you been? Why were you not in to dinner?”
“I could not get home in time. I have been detained.”
“It is false,” she retorted, her blue eyes flashing fire. “Business, business! it is always your excuse now! You stay out for no good purpose.”
The outbreak startled Lucy. She backed a few paces, looking scared.
“Sibylla!” was all the amazed reply uttered by Lionel. ”

“ Mumple came to the top of the stairs, carrying a bedroom candle and wrapped in a shabby voluminous dressing-gown.
"You're back, Mr. Imason?" She did not see Sibylla, and held up her hand. "Hark to poor little Frank!" she said. "He's been crying all the evening. I can't quiet him. He misses his mummy so."
Could words more sorely condemn Sibylla—the woman who had forsaken her child? But Grantley gathered her gently into his arms and began to carry her upstairs. Then Mrs. Mumple saw, and turned on him eyes full of wonder.
"She's unconscious, I think," he said. "She can do nothing for herself. ”

“ And the alternative was hideous to him now—hideous in its loss of all nobility, of all the ideal, in its cynically open-eyed acceptance of what was low and base. He would have come to that but for Sibylla. But for him, even Sibylla—Sibylla mated to Grantley—might have come to it also. It was from such a fate as this that they must rescue one another. One wise decision, one courageous stroke, and the thing was done. Very emotional, very exalted, he contrasted with the life Caylesham had led the life he and Sibylla were to lead. Could any man hesitate? ”

“ Highly conscious of the honour done to her, somewhat alarmed at the threatened appeal to her ever too ready emotion, Sibylla went down the hill.
A pale frail old student with the hands of a labouring man—that was her first impression of Mumples' husband. He had the air of remoteness from the world and of having done with the storms of life which comes to men who have lived many years in a library ”

“ But when I saw the glance of profound admiration darted by Sibylla at the interesting stranger, I felt sure she would only like him the more if he were found out to be a murderer in reality; for there is a certain school of young ladies who do not stand upon trifles in the way of their flirtations, but extract fresh reasons for glorifying the object of their preference, from facts which the unwary lay before them by way of warnings. ”

“ Bitter aggravation lay in her tone, bitter aggravation in her gesture. Was Lionel tempted to forget himself?—to set her right? If so, he beat the temptation down. All men would not have been so forbearing.
“Sibylla, I have told you truth,” he simply said.
“Which is as much as to say that Fred told—” she was vehemently beginning, when the words were stopped by the entrance of John Massingbird. John, caught in the shower near Deerham Court, made no scruple of running to it for shelter, and was in time to witness Sibylla’s angry tones, and inflamed face. ”

“ As good be dead!”
“Sibylla,” said the doctor, more impressively than he often spoke, “I know your constitution, and I know pretty well what you can and what you can not bear. Don’t attempt to stir out after sunset again. Should you get stronger it will be a different matter. At present it must not be. Will you remember this, Mr. Verner?”
“If my wife will allow me to remember it,” he said, bending to Sibylla with a kindly tone. “My will was good to keep her in, all this winter: but she would not be kept.”
“What has Jan been telling you about me, papa? It is a shame of him! I am not ill.” ”

“ Heartless, selfish, vain, and ambitious, Verner’s Pride possessed far more attraction for Sibylla than did either Lionel or Frederick Massingbird. Allow her to keep quiet possession of that, and she would not cast much thought to either of them. If the conflict actually came, Lionel felt, in his innate refinement, that the proper course for Sibylla to adopt would be to retire from all social ties, partially to retire from the world—as Miss West had suggested she should do now in the uncertainty. Lionel did not wholly agree with Miss West. ”

“ A clear moon shone over all. They met nobody: the man who had vainly watched for the yacht had gone home. Sibylla did not speak. Once or twice she caressed Rollo, who knew her and welcomed her. For the rest she trudged steadily through the puddles, and set her feet resolutely to climb the sticky road. She never looked up at her companion. The brutality of his pride rejoiced again to see her thus. Here was a fine revenge for her scornful words, for the audacity with which she had dared to bring him within an ace of irremediable shame—him and the child she had borne to him! ”

“ Sibylla's own thoughts widened the survey, embracing in it the couple down at Old Mill House—the faithful patient woman whose love made even the ridiculous touching; the broken old man who had given the best of his life in expiation for a brief madness, and now crept home to end his days, asking nothing but peace, hoping at best not to be despised or shunned. Above in his cot lay her little son, at the other end of the scale, at the beginning of all things; and opposite to her was Grantley himself, unbroken, but not unchanged; obedient to the lessons, but never put out of heart by them ”

“ In the East itself, with the exception of the tax of 1183, [37] nothing was done that was good, and two things were done which were evil. Sibylla married her second husband, Guy de Lusignan, in 1180—a marriage destined to be the cause of many dissensions; for Sibylla, the eldest daughter of Amalric I., carried to her husband—a French adventurer—a presumptive title to the crown, which would never be admitted without dispute. ”

“ He relaxed his hold on her, and sank back in his chair with a sigh.
"I'm tiring you," said Sibylla. "I'll go now, and leave you alone with Mumples. I'll call her back here. No, I can't stay to tea—you've made me think of too much. But I'll come to-morrow and bring my little boy."
"If what you say is true, you must pray for yourself sometimes? Pray for me too, madame."
"Yes, I'll pray for you the prayer I love best: 'Those things which for our unworthiness we dare not and for our blindness we cannot ask——' I will pray for those, for you and for me. ”

“ You are sadly prejudiced against the Wests.”
“And you in their favour,” she could not help saying. “But I shall ever be thankful for one thing—that you have escaped Sibylla.”
Was he thankful for it? Scarcely. While that pained heart of his, those coursing pulses, could beat on in this tumultuous manner at the bare sound of her name. ”

“ We happen to have a kitten, and I think he's more at his ease with that."
"Nonsense! Men are men, you know."
"Most of them seem to be," admitted Sibylla.
"It would be becoming," Christine observed, "if you recollected that you'd been in the wrong all through. You believed in the wrong doctor, you wanted the wrong thing, you were quite unreasonable. Hadn't you better remember that?"
"I do remember it. And if you want another admission—well, Grantley never reminds me of it by a look or a word."
"He's very much of a gentleman, Sibylla."
"He's never the least ungentlemanlike, Christine." ”