Lyon Berners led Rosa Blondelle to the piano, arranged her music-stool, and placed the music sheets before her. She turned to one of Byron’s impassioned songs, and while he hung enraptured over her, she sang the words, and ever she raised her eyes to his, to give eloquent expression and point to the sentiment. And then his eyes answered, if his voice and his heart did not.
That song was finished, and many more songs were sung, each more impassioned than the other, until at last, Rosa, growing weary and becoming slightly hoarse, arose from the piano, and with a half-suppressed sigh sank into an easy-chair.
Then Sybil—who had watched them through the evening, and noted every look and word and smile and sigh that passed between them, and who now found her powers of self-command waning—Sybil, I say, rang for the bedroom candles. And when they were brought, the little party separated and retired for the night.
From this time forth, in the insanity of her jealousy, and with a secretiveness only possible to the morally insane, Sybil completely concealed her suspicions and her sufferings from her husband and her guest. She was affectionate with Lyon, pleasant with Rosa, and confiding in her manners towards both.
And they were completely deceived, and never more fatally so than when they imagined themselves alone together.
There was never a tender glance, a fluttering sigh, a soft smile, a low-toned, thrilling word passed between the false flirt and the fascinated husband, that was not seen and heard by the heart-broken, brain-crazed young wife!
And oh! could these triflers with sacred love—these wanderers on the brink of a fearful abyss—have seen the look of her face then, they would have fled from each other for ever, rather than to have dared the desperation of her roused soul.
But they saw nothing, knew nothing, suspected nothing! They were, like children playing with deadly poisons, with edge tools, or with fire, ignorant of the fatal toys they handled.
And, moreover they meant nothing. Theirs was the shallowest pretence of love that ever went by the name of a flirtation. On the woman’s side, it was but a love of admiration and an affectation of sentiment. On the man’s side, it was pity and gratified self-love. So little did Rosa Blondelle really care for Lyon Berners, and so truly did she estimate the value of her very luxurious home at Black Hall, that had she known the state of Sybil’s mind, she would very quickly have put an end to her flirtation with the husband, and done all that she could to recover the confidence of the wife, and then—looked out among the attractive young men of the neighborhood for another party to that sentimental, meaningless love-making, which was yet a necessity to her shallow life.