[CHAPTER IV.]
TWO CONFEDERATES, IN COUNCIL.
Philip Yates and his wife were sitting upon the veranda of their house one pleasant evening, some time after the events described in the last chapter.
He was in unusually good humor and fine spirits that night. Probably, during the past weeks, his successes had been numerous; and however much his wife might have deplored the cause had she been a woman to feel the sin and degradation, she could but have congratulated herself upon the effect which it produced.
He was smoking and talking at intervals to Sybil, who sat in a low chair at a little distance, looking down the valley with the earnest, absent gaze habitual with her.
"Sing me something, Sybil," he said, at last; "it's deuced dull sitting here alone. I can't see what keeps Tom."
"Do you expect him back to-night?" she asked, indifferently, more as if fearful of offending him by her silence than from any desire of her own for conversation.
"I did, but it is growing so late I begin to think he won't come; it's always the way if one wants a man."
"You have no business on hand?"
"Not to-night; I need him for that very reason. What's the use of a man's smoking his cigar and drinking his glass all alone."