“Her husband is with her, Beatrix, and so you can not of course go to her now.”
“Oh, but I am so anxious to do so. Look here, Clement. I stood there among the crowd this evening, gazing upon that bleeding and dying woman, until the sight of her ghastly form and face seemed to affect me as the Medusa’s head was said to have affected the beholder, and turn me into stone. Clement, I was so petrified that I could not move or speak, even when she appealed to us all to know whether any among us could believe her to be capable of such an act. I could not speak; I could not move. She must have thought that I too condemned her, and I cannot bear to rest under that suspicion of hers. I must go to her now, Clement.”
“Indeed you must not, Trix. Wait till she makes her appearance: that will be time enough,” answered her brother.
“Oh, this is a horrible night; I wish it were over. I cannot go to bed; nobody can. The ladies are all sitting huddled together in the dressing-room, although the fire has gone out; and the servants are all gathered in the kitchen, too panic-stricken to do anything. Oh, an awful night! I wish it were morning.”
“It will soon be daylight now, dear Beatrix. You had better go and rejoin your companions.”
And so the brother and sister separated for the night; Beatrix going to sit and shudder with the other ladies in the dressing-room, and Clement returning to the parlor to lounge and doze among the gentlemen.
Only his anxiety for Sybil’s safety so much disturbed his repose, that if he did but drop into an instant’s slumber he started from it in a vague fright. So the small hours of the morning wore on and brought the dull, drizzly, wintry daylight.
Meanwhile Lyon and Sybil Berners rode on through mist and rain.