Cruel As The Grave. Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

your present happiness and my death would restore it, I would die to give it back to you,” fervently exclaimed the stranger.

      And for the moment she felt as she had spoken, for she was most profoundly moved by a magnanimity she had never seen equalled.

      Sybil blushed like a child, and found nothing to say in reply to this excessive praise. She only left her hand in the clasp of the stranger, who covered it with kisses, and then continued:

      “When I first saw your little white card and the delicate tracery of your name and your kind words, I seemed to know it was a friend’s writing. And when I first saw your sweet face and heard your tender tones, both so full of heavenly pity, I felt that the good Lord had not forsaken me, for He had sent one of his holy angels to visit me. Ah, lady, if you had only come and looked at me so and spoken to me so, and then passed out and away forever, still, still, that look and that tone would have remained with me, a comfort and a blessing for all time. But now—but now to hold out your hands to lead me to a place in your own home, by your own side—oh, it is too much! too much!”

      And tears of many mingled emotions flowed down the speaker’s cheeks.

      “There, there!” said Sybil, utterly confused by this excessive, but most sincere adulation, yet still caressing the stranger’s fair head, “there, dear, dry your eyes, and tell me if you can be ready to leave this place with us to-morrow morning.”

      Again the foreign lady seized and kissed the hands of her new friend, exclaiming fervently:

      “Yes dear lady, yes! I am too deeply touched by your heavenly goodness not to be anxious to profit by it as soon as possible.”

      “Then I will leave you to your preparations for the journey,” said Sybil, rising.

      Rosa also stood up.

      “There will be much to be done in a short time. Will you let me send my maid to help yours?” inquired Sybil, with a hesitating smile.

      “Thanks, dear madam. I shall be much obliged,” replied Rosa, with a bow.

      “And there is yet another request I have to make,” added Mrs. Berners, pausing with her hand upon the latch of the door—“Will you kindly meet us at breakfast at eight o’clock to-morrow morning in our private sitting-room, so that I may make you acquainted with my husband before we all start on our journey together?”

      “With pleasure, dear lady! It is your will to load me with benefits, and you must be gratified,” replied Rosa, with a faint smile.

      “Then I will come myself and fetch you, a little before the hour,” added Sybil, playfully throwing a kiss as she darted through the door.

      When she re-entered her own apartment, she found her husband impatiently pacing up and down the floor.

      “How very long you have been, my darling Sybil,” he said, with all the fondness of a newly-wedded lover, as he went to meet her.

      “Oh, I am so glad you thought it long!” she answered mischievously, as she took his hand and pulled him to the big easy-chair and pushed him down into it.

      “Sit down there, and listen to me,” she said, with a pretty little air of authority. Then she drew an ottoman to his side and sunk down upon it, and leaned her arms upon his knees, and lifted her beautiful dark face, now all aglow with the delight of benevolence, and told him all that had passed in the interview between herself and Mrs. Blondelle.

      And Lyon Berners, with his arm over her graceful shoulders, his fingers stringing her silken black ringlets, and his eyes gazing with infinite tenderness and admiration down on her eloquent face, listened with attentive interest to the story. But at its close, great was his astonishment.

      “My dear, impulsive Sybil, what have you done!” he exclaimed.

      “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 tête-à-tête,” 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 not to be surpassed by the haughtiest in the Old Dominion.

      “Well said, my little wife! And now, as this matter is decided, I must see about taking additional places in the stage-coach. How many will be wanted? What retinue has this foreign princess in distress,” inquired Lyon, rather sarcastically.

      “There will be three places required, for the lady, child and nurse.”

      “Whe-ew! My dear Sybil, we are collecting a ready made family! Does the child squall? or the nurse drink?” inquired Lyon, with a laugh, as without waiting for a reply he rang the bell, and gave the order for three more places to be taken inside the Staunton coach for the morning.

      And soon after this the young pair retired to rest.

      Very early the next morning Sybil Berners came out of her chamber, looking fresh and bright as the new day itself. She wore a close-fitting travelling dress of crimson merino, that well became her elegant little figure and rich, dark complexion.

      She glanced around the room to see that everything was in order. Yes; the fire was bright, the hearth clean, the breakfast-table neatly set, and the morning sun shining through the red-curtained windows and glancing upon the silver tea-service.

      With a smile of satisfaction, she tossed back her raven-black ringlets, and passed from the room and through the hall, and rapped at the door of her new acquaintance.