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.