Cruel As The Grave

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the love that she thought he had withdrawn from her; still less could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?"