Cruel As The Grave. Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

of her blooming complexion and the golden glory of her hair.

      An instant Sybil paused in involuntary admiration, and then recovered herself and greeted the lady with affectionate warmth.

      “It is nearly eight o’clock, dear, and breakfast is quite ready. Will you come now?” inquired Sybil, when these salutations were passed.

      Rosa assented with a sweet smile, and Sybil led the way into her own sitting-room.

      Mr. Berners had come in during his wife’s short absence, and he now stood before the fire with the morning paper in his hand. He put it down on the table, and came forward to meet his wife, and to welcome her guest.

      “Mrs. Blondelle, Mr. Berners,” said Sybil, introducing the parties to each other by the simplest formula.

      And while they were bowing together, Sybil was watching mischievously to see what effect the dazzling beauty of Rosa Blondelle would have upon Lyon Berners.

      She saw it!

      After bowing, they lifted their heads and looked at each other—he, at first, with the courtesy of a host—but she with a radiant and enchanting smile.

      Sybil was prepared to see Lyon’s surprise at the first view of this peerless creature; but she was by no means prepared to witness the involuntary gaze of intense and breathless admiration and wonder that he fixed for a moment on her beautiful face. That gaze said as eloquently as words could have spoken:

      “This is the most wondrous, perfect creature that the world ever saw! This is the master-piece of nature.”

      With the sunlight of her smile still shining on him, Rosa held out her hand, and said in the sweetest tones:

      “Sir, I have no words good enough to tell you how deeply I feel your kindness and that of your dear wife to me.”

      “Dear lady, Mrs. Berners and myself do but gratify our own tastes in trying to serve you; for it will be a great happiness to us if we succeed in doing so,” replied Lyon Berners, with a look and tone that proved his perfect sincerity and earnestness.

      As thus they smiled and glanced, and spoke to each other, Sybil also glanced from the one to the other; a sudden pang shot through her heart, exciting a nameless dread in her mind. “Even so quickly may one catch the plague!”

      “Let me lead you to the table,” said Mr. Berners, offering his arm to Mrs. Blondelle, and conducting her to her place.

      Above all, Sybil was a lady; for she was a Berners. So, with this strange wound in her heart, this vague warning in her mind, she took her seat at the head of her table and did its honors with her usual courtesy and grace.

      Mr. Berners seconded his wife in all hospitable attentions to their beautiful young guest.

      While they were all still seated at the table, a groom rapped at the door and reported the stage-coach ready.

      They all arose in a hurry, and began to make the last hasty preparations for departure.

      Mrs. Blondelle hurried into her own room, to have her luggage taken down stairs to be put on the coach, and also to summon her nurse with the child.

      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; and murmured:

      “I must steal a kiss from these sweet lips when and wherever I can, my own one, since we are not to be much alone together now.”

      And then he released her, and hurried off to put on his overcoat.

      Sybil stood for a minute, smiling, where he had left her, and so happy that she forgot she had to get ready to go. The pain was gone from her heart, and the cloud from her brain.

      And as yet, so little did she know of herself or others, that she could not have told why the pain and the cloud ever came, or why they ever went away.

      As yet she did not know that her husband’s admiring smiles given to a rival beauty had really caused her nameless suffering; or that it was his loving caresses, bestowed upon herself, that had soothed it.

      In a word, Sybil Berners, the young bride, did not dream that the bitter, bitter seed of jealousy was germinating in her heart, to grow and spread perhaps into a deadly upas of the soul, destroying all moral life around it.