Sylvia's Lovers

She tried to crouch more and more into the corner, into the hidden

shadow--to sink into the ground out of sight.

Once more he spoke, beseeching her to lift up her face, to let him

hear her speak.

But she only moaned.

'Sylvia!' said he, thinking he could change his tactics, and pique

her into speaking, that he would make a pretence of suspicion and

offence.

'Sylvia! one would think you weren't glad to see me back again at

length. I only came in late last night, and my first thought on

wakening was of you; it has been ever since I left you.' Sylvia took her hands away from her face; it was gray as the face of

death; her awful eyes were passionless in her despair.

'Where have yo' been?' she asked, in slow, hoarse tones, as if her

voice were half strangled within her.

'Been!' said he, a red light coming into his eyes, as he bent his

looks upon her; now, indeed, a true and not an assumed suspicion

entering his mind.

'Been!' he repeated; then, coming a step nearer to her, and taking

her hand, not tenderly this time, but with a resolution to be

satisfied.

'Did not your cousin--Hepburn, I mean--did not he tell you?--he saw

the press-gang seize me,--I gave him a message to you--I bade you

keep true to me as I would be to you.' Between every clause of this speech he paused and gasped for her

answer; but none came. Her eyes dilated and held his steady gaze

prisoner as with a magical charm--neither could look away from the

other's wild, searching gaze. When he had ended, she was silent for

a moment, then she cried out, shrill and fierce,-'Philip!' No answer.

Wilder and shriller still, 'Philip!' she cried.

He was in the distant ware-room completing the last night's work

before the regular shop hours began; before breakfast, also, that

his wife might not find him waiting and impatient.

He heard her cry; it cut through doors, and still air, and great

bales of woollen stuff; he thought that she had hurt herself, that

her mother was worse, that her baby was ill, and he hastened to the

spot whence the cry proceeded.

On opening the door that separated the shop from the sitting-room,

he saw the back of a naval officer, and his wife on the ground,

huddled up in a heap; when she perceived him come in, she dragged

herself up by means of a chair, groping like a blind person, and

came and stood facing him.

The officer turned fiercely round, and would have come towards

Philip, who was so bewildered by the scene that even yet he did not

understand who the stranger was, did not perceive for an instant

that he saw the realization of his greatest dread.