But she snatched up that card, glanced at it fiercely, tore it in two,
and threw the fragments far apart, exclaiming in bitter triumph: "Not yet! oh! not yet! I am not dead yet! Nor have the halls and acres
of my fathers passed quite away from their daughter to the possession of
a traitor and an ingrate."
He gazed upon her now in amazement and alarm. Had she gone suddenly
mad?
She stood there before him the incarnation of the fiercest and intensest
passion he had ever seen or imagined.
He went and took her in his arms, saying more gently than before: "Sybil, what is it?"
She tried, harshly and cruelly, to break from him. But he held her in a
fast, loving embrace, murmuring still: "Sybil, you must tell me what troubles you?"
"What troubles me!" she furiously exclaimed. "Let me go, man! Your touch
is a dishonor to me! Let me go!"
"But, dearest Sybil."
"Let me go, I say! What! will you use your brute strength to hold me?"
He dropped his arms, and left her free.
"No; I beg your pardon, Sybil. I thought you were my loving wife," he
said.
"You were mistaken. I am not Rosa Blondelle!" she cried.
"Hush! hush! my dearest Sybil!" he muttered earnestly, as he went and
closed and locked the parlor door, to save her from being seen by the
servants in her present insane passion.
But she swept past him like a storm, and laid her hand on the lock. She
found it fast.
"Open, and let me pass," she cried.
"No, no, my dear Sybil. Remain here until you are calmer, and then tell
me--"
"Let me out, I say!"
"But, dearest Sybil."
"What! would you keep me a prisoner--by force?" she cried, with a
cruel sneer.
He unlocked the door and set it wide open.
"No, even though you are a lunatic, as I do believe. Go, and expose your
condition, if you must. I cannot restrain you by fair means, and I will
not by foul."
And Sybil swept from the room, but she did not expose herself. She fled
away to that "chamber of desolation" where she had passed so many
agonizing hours, and threw herself, face downwards, upon the floor, and
lay there in the collapse of utter despair.
Meanwhile Lyon Berners paced up and down the parlor floor.