They did not suspect how much she knew, or how much more she imagined.
Before them the refined instincts of the lady still kept down the angry
passions of the woman.
Whenever her emotions were about to overcome her, she slipped away, not
to her own room, where she was liable to interruption, but far up into
the empty attics of the old house, where, in some corresponding chamber
of desolation, she gave way to such storms of anguish and despair as
leave the deepest "Traces on heart and brain."
And after an hour or two she would return to the drawing-room, whence
she had never been missed by the pair of sentimentalists, who had been
too much absorbed in each other, and in Mozart or Beethoven, to notice
her absence.
And while all unconscious of her, they continued their musical
flirtation, she would sit with her back to the light, toying with her
crochet-work and listening to Rosa's songs.
She was still as a volcano before it bursts forth to bury cities under
its burning lava flood!
Why did she not, in the sacred privacy of their mutual apartment appeal
to the better nature of her husband by telling him how much his
flirtation with their guest pained her, his wife? Or else, why had she
not spoken plainly with her guest?
Why? Because Sybil Berners had too much pride and too little faith to do
the one or the other. She could not stoop to plead with her husband for
the love that she thought he had withdrawn from her; still less could
she bend to tell her guest how much his defection troubled her. Nor did
she believe her interference would do any good. For, to Sybil Berners
earnest nature, all things seemed earnest, and this vain and shallow
flirtation wore the aspect of a deep, impassioned attachment. And in her
forbearance she acted from instinct rather than from reason, for she
never even thought of interfering between these platonists. So,
outwardly at least, she was calm. But this calmness could not last. Her
heart was bleeding, burning, breaking! and its prisoned flood of fire
and blood must burst forth at length. The volcano seems quiet; but the
pent up lava in its bosom must at last give forth mutterings of its
impending irruption, and swiftly upon these mutterings must follow
flames and ruin!
It happened thus with Sybil.
One morning, when the weather was too threatening to permit any one to
indulge in an outdoor walk, it chanced that Lyon and Sybil Berners were
sitting together at a centre-table in the parlor--Lyon reading the
morning paper; Sybil trying to read a new magazine--when Rosa
Blondelle, with her flowing, azure-hued robes and her floating golden
locks, and her beaming smiles, entered the room and seated herself at
the table, saying sweetly: "My dear Mrs. Berners, is it to-morrow that you and I have arranged to
drive out and return the calls that were made upon us?"