Cruel As The Grave

Go, when the hunter's hand hath wrung

From forest cave her shrieking young,

And calm the raging lioness;

But soothe not--mock not my distress.--BYRON.

Lyon Berners was utterly perplexed and troubled. He could not in any way

explain to himself the sudden and furious passion of his wife.

Suddenly it occurred to him that it was in some way connected with the

cards she had thrown into the fire. They were not all burned up. Some

few had fallen scorched upon the hearth. These he gathered up and

examined; and as he looked at one after another, his face expressed, in

turn, surprise, dismay, and amusement. Then he burst out laughing. He

really could not help doing so, serious as the subject was; for upon

every single card, instead of Rosa Blondelle, he had written: Mrs. ROSA BERNERS.

"Was there ever such a mischief of a mistake?" he exclaimed, as he

ceased laughing and sat down by his table to consider what was to be

done next.

"Poor Sybil! poor, dear, fiery-hearted child, it is no wonder! And yet,

Heaven truly knows it was because I was thinking of you, and not of

the owner of the cards, that I wrote that name upon them unconsciously,"

he said to himself, as he sat with his fine head bowed upon his hand,

gravely reviewing the history of the last few days.

His eyes were opened now--not only to his wife's jealousy, but to his

own thoughtless conduct in doing anything to arouse it.

In the innermost of his own soul he was so sure of the perfect integrity

of his love for his wife, that it had never before occurred to him that

she could doubt it--that any unconscious act or thoughtless gallantry

on his part could cause her to doubt it.

Now, however, he remembered with remorse that, of late, since the rising

of the court, all his mornings and evenings had been spent exclusively

in the company of the beautiful blonde. Any wife under such

circumstances might have been jealous; but few could have suffered such

agonies of wounded love as wrung the bosom of Sybil Berners,--of Sybil

Berners, the last of a race in whose nature more of the divine and more

of the infernal met than in almost any other race that ever lived on

earth.

Her husband thought of all this now. He remembered what lovers and what

haters the men and women of her house had been.

He recalled how, in one generation, a certain Reginald Berners, who was

engaged to be married to a very lovely young lady, on one occasion found

his betrothed and an imaginary rival sitting side by side, amusing

themselves with what they might have considered a very harmless

flirtation, when, transported with jealous fury, he slew the man before

the very eyes of the girl. For this crime Reginald was tried, but for

some inexplicable reason, acquitted; and he lived to marry the girl for

whose sake he had imbrued his hands in a fellow-man's blood.