Sybilla

“ Poor Lady Sybilla, how sad, how pale she looked!"
"Be not cast down, Falconer," continued the kind old Laird of Largo, on seeing the arquebussier gazing dreamily at the tall house of Barton, which stood like a watch-tower on the left bank of the Leith; "be not heavy o' heart, because thy purse is at low water; thou shalt have thy winsome bride yet, my lad! ”

“ SYBILLA, MYRTILLO, AND FURIOSO. ACERTAIN king had a beautiful golden-haired daughter named Sybilla, whose suitors came from every country, though with small success, since the princess had vowed to remain single until one proving to be the mightiest hero of the world should appear.
At no great distance from her father's country lived a horrible giant, every hair of whose head could change, at will, into a fiery serpent. He had one eye, the size of a mill-wheel, and his teeth looked like rocks in a mighty cavern. ”

“ You've been and delivered that there little message of mine, I suppose?"
"Yes," said Sybilla; "and she will meet you to-night in the Beech Walk, and hear what you have got to say."
"The deuce she will!" said the artist; "and have her fire-eating husband catch us and set the flunkies at me. Not if I know myself. If my lady wants to hear what I've got to say, let my lady come to me."
"She never will," responded Sybilla. "You don't know her. Don't be an idiot, George—do as she requests. ”

“ Sybilla gazed after him with her dark, evil smile.
"Fume and fret as you please, my dear Sir Everard, but this is only sowing the first seed. I shall watch your wife, and I will tell you my suspicions and my fancies, and you will listen in spite of your uplifted sublimity now. Jealousy is ingrained in your nature, though you do not know it, and a very little breath will fan the tiny coal into an inextinguishable flame."
She arose, rang the bell for the servant to clear the table, shook out her black silk robe, and went, with a smile on her handsome face, to do the fascinating to Mr. Parmalee. ”

“ I said in a whisper. "Shall I speak to Guy?—or Lady Sybil?"
Lady Judith's uplifted hand said unmistakably, "No!"
"Watch," she said. "Watch and pray, and wait. Oh, no speaking!—at least, not yet."
"But till when?" I asked.
"I should say, till you all return here—unless something happen in the interim. But if thou dost speak, little one—do not be surprised if nobody believe thee. Very impulsive men, like thy brother, rarely indulge suspicion or mistrust: and Sybil is most unsuspicious. They are likely enough to think thee fanciful and unjust." ”

“ Because, in the first place dear Sybil, I loved you, you only, long before I ever married you!” said Lyon Berners in increasing surprise.
“But—if you had met her before you had ever seen me, you would have loved and married her.”
“No! On my honor, Sybil!”
“Yet you admire her so much!”
“Dear Sybil! I admire all things beautiful in nature and art, but I don’t want to marry all!”
“And are you sure that this beautiful Rosa Blondelle would not make you a more suitable companion than I do?” she inquired. ”

“ But Captain Inconnu vouchsafed neither word nor glance to his son, and no other one presumed to present him to the lady guest.
Yet at that breakfast Sybil made a most innocent conquest. The boy, who had seen very few young girls in his life, and had never seen so beautiful a woman as Sybil, at first sight fell purely in love with her, for the sake of whose sweet face he felt he could die a thousand deaths, without ever even dreaming of such a reward as to be permitted to kiss her hand!
What woman does not know at once when a life has been silently laid at her feet? ”

“ The vast form of the spreading factory, the roofs and gardens of the village, the Tudor chimneys of the house of Trafford, the spire of the gothic church, with the sparkling river and the sylvan hack-ground, came rather suddenly on the sight of Egremont. They were indeed in the pretty village-street before he was aware he was about to enter it. Some beautiful children rushed out of a cottage and flew to Sybil, crying out, "the queen, the queen;" one clinging to her dress, another seizing her arm, and a third, too small to struggle, pouting out its lips to be embraced. ”

“ And love of you, Sybil," he continued, in a tone of impassioned pathos, "has been to me for years the hoarded treasure of my life. For this I have haunted your hearth and hovered round your home; for this I have served your father like a slave, and embarked in a cause with which I have little sympathy, and which can meet with no success. It is your image that has stimulated my ambition, developed my powers, sustained me in the hour of humiliation, and secured me that material prosperity which I can now command. ”

“ If the Lord have marked thee for His own—as by the strivings of His Spirit with thee, I trust He has—how sorry He must be for thee, just now!"
Sorry! Then why did He do it? When I am sorry for one I love, I do not give him bitter pain. I felt as if I should sink and die, if I did not get relief by pouring out my heart. I broke from Lady Judith,—she tried in vain to stop me—and I dashed into Lady Sybil's chamber. Queen or villein, it was all one to me then. ”

“ Thinking only of the elucidation of the mystery that had surrounded Sybil, I crept on noiselessly after her. Apparently she was no stranger to the place, for, passing the first room on the left, she entered the second, which proved to be the great drawing-room where I had once stood beside my lost bride. Passing to the end, her thin evening shoes making no noise on the thick dust-covered carpet, she crept like a thief to the opposite end of the spacious apartment, and placed the lamp upon a little table. ”

“ No, Sybil, I have known you, I have had the happiness and the sorrow of knowing you too well to doubt the convictions of your mind, or to believe that they can be lightly removed, and yet I would strive to remove them. You look upon me as an enemy, as a natural foe, because I am born among the privileged. I am a man, Sybil, as well as a noble. ”

“ My sister Sybil loved Guy, and would have died rather than sacrifice him to a mob of parvenu nobles. She is gone, and you are come in her stead, the saints know how! You are not the Sybil whom I loved, but a stranger,—a cold, calculating, politic, false-hearted woman. Heartless, ungenerous, faithless, false! I sweep you out of my heart this day, as if you had never entered it. You are false to Guy, and false to God. I will never, never, never forgive you! From this hour you are no more to me than the meanest Paynim idolatress whom I would think scorn to touch! ”

“ When Sybil Berners found herself for a moment alone with her husband, she laid her hand upon his coat sleeve to stay him, in his haste, and she inquired:
“What do you think of her now?”
“I think, my darling Sybil, that you were right in your judgment of this lady. And I agree with you perfectly. I think, my only love, that in what you have done for this stranger, you have acted not only with the goodness, but with the wisdom of an angel,” replied Lyon Berners, snatching her suddenly to his heart, and holding her closely there while he pressed kiss after kiss upon her crimson lip ”

“ Your solitude is at length disturbed by the sepulchral tone of an old weather-beaten Sybil, who, peering with an ugly, wizened, and vinegar countenance through a wicket or small crevice overhead, screams out, with shrill and angry voice, "qui quiere!" while, at the same time, doubtful of your rank or character, she scans with the hideous glances of an evil eye the bearings of your person. When you have satisfied her on this head, she, much against the grain, raises the unwilling latch by means of a greasy rope. ”

“ Sybil had never seemed more happy, and for a moment Lord Arthur had been tempted to play the coward’s part, to write to Lady Clementina for the pill, and to let the marriage go on as if there was no such person as Mr. Podgers in the world. His better nature, however, soon asserted itself, and even when Sybil flung herself weeping into his arms, he did not falter. The beauty that stirred his senses had touched his conscience also. He felt that to wreck so fair a life for the sake of a few months’ pleasure would be a wrong thing to do. ”

“ At length, unable any longer to repress her tortured heart, Sybil said, "Stephen, be generous; speak to me of your friend."
"I have no friend," said Morley, without taking his hands from his face.
"The Saints in heaven have mercy on me," said Sybil, "for I am very wretched."
"No, no, no," said Morley, rising rapidly from his seat, and again kneeling at her side, "not wretched; not that tone of anguish! What can I do? what say? Sybil, dearest Sybil, I love you so much, so fervently, so devotedly; none can love you as I do: say not you are wretched!" ”

“ Death kept his eye on the two, and speaking in a low voice, inquired of his companion;
“Beautiful mask! though we may not yet discover ourselves to each other, yet we are at liberty to form a guess of the identity of our friends here?”
“Yes,” answered Sybil, in a low voice. She scarcely understood what she had been asked, or what she had answered; for her whole attention was absorbed in watching her husband and her rival, who were walking immediately before her—so close, yet so unconscious of her presence; so near in person, yet so far in spirit! ”

“ Is it a true warning to beware of the man, or only a foolish, baseless fancy, of which I ought to be ashamed?
And—I cannot tell why—it has lately assumed a more definite and dreadful form. A terror besets me that he has some design on Lady Sybil. He knows that she is the rightful heir of the crown: and that—I do believe, through his machinations—she has been set aside for her own son. If his wife were to die—the holy saints defend it!—I believe him capable of poisoning Guy, in order to marry Sybil, and to make himself King of Jerusalem. ”

“ Others came: beautiful and young. As Sybil and Egremont walked along, the race too tender for labour, seemed to spring out of every cottage to greet "their queen." Her visits had been very rare of late, but they were never forgotten; they formed epochs in the village annals of the children, some of whom knew only by tradition the golden age when Sybil Gerard lived at the great house, and daily glanced like a spirit among their homes, smiling and met with smiles, blessing and ever blessed. ”

“ Jeannette had not been long absorbed in her revery when she was joined by her god-mother, Sybille, who arrived carrying on her shoulder a large bundle of hemp that she wished to lay in the streamlet, formed by the overflow of the spring, in order to have it retted. Although simple minded people took Sybille for a witch, nothing in her features recalled those usually ascribed to old women possessed of the evil spirit—hooked nose and chin, cavernous eyes and an owlish aspect. ”

“ Sibylla implored. "Your life will come back to you in the sunshine and the country air. We shan't let you feel like that. Why, it's full of life here. There's a wedding to-morrow, Mr. Mumple! And another engaged couple—my brother and Miss Raymore! And you'll like my husband, and I'll bring my baby boy to see you."
"Such a pretty little dear," exclaimed Mumples.
"You must take an interest in us," smiled Sibylla; "and then you'll be pleased when we are—won't he, Mumples? Because you're to be one of us, just as your wife is." ”

“ Much of that deep misery which Sybil had endured elsewhere, when crouching in the damp and mist outside her mother's door, came over Rose's spirit now. Henceforward, she felt that life must be objectless; that safety or pursuit, freedom or captivity, sea or land, must be all alike to her; and for a time her poor brain, so long oppressed by successive sorrows and excitements, became almost unconscious of external impressions, and she sat as one in a dream, hearing only the buzz of the summer flies and the voice of the pagoda-thrush. ”

“ Guy says the King is a mesel, [#] and dwells in chambers to himself; and he has never been married, so there is no Queen, except the widow of the late King his father; and she is of the high blood of Messeigneurs the Cæsars, [#] but is not the mother of the King. He is like Guy, for his own mother, who was the Damoiselle de Courtenay, died when he was very young: and he has one sister of the whole blood, who is called the Lady Sybil; and one sister of the half blood, who is called the Lady Isabel. ”

“ And then her father returned, ushering in a person and saying, "Here is my friend Mr Franklin that I was speaking of, Sybil, who is going to be our neighbour; down Harold, down!" and he presented to his daughter the companion of Mr St Lys in that visit to the Hand-loom weaver when she had herself met the vicar of Mowbray.
Sybil rose, and letting her book drop gently on the table, received Egremont with composure and native grace. It is civilization that makes us awkward, for it gives us an uncertain position. Perplexed, we take refuge in pretence ”

“ With a heart not without emotion; with a kindling cheek, and eyes suffused with tears, Sybil read the speech of Egremont. She ceased; still holding the paper with one hand, she laid on it the other with tenderness, and looked up to breathe as it were for relief. ”

“ Sybil shook her head.
"Yes, my child," said Ursula, "the world has taught you that there are affections which the cloister can neither satisfy nor supply. Ah! Sybil, I too have loved."
The blood rose to the cheek of Sybil, and then returned as quickly to the heart; her trembling hand pressed that of Ursula as she sighed and murmured, "No, no, no."
"Yes, it is his spirit that hovers over your life, Sybil; and in vain you would forget what haunts your heart. One not less gifted than him; as good, as gentle, as gracious ”