“Lyon, that poor child! If we ever go home again, we must adopt and educate him.”
“We will do so, Sybil.”
“For, oh! Lyon, although I am entirely innocent of that most heinous crime, and entirely incapable of it, yet, when I remember how my rage burned against that poor woman only an hour before her death, I feel—I feel as if I were half guilty of it! as if—Heaven pardon me!—I might, in some moment of madness, have been wholly guilty of it! Lyon, I shudder at myself!” cried Sybil, growing very pale.
“You should thank Heaven that you have been saved from such mortal sin, dear wife, and also pray Heaven always to save you from your own fierce passions,” said Mr. Berners, very gravely.
“I have breathed that thanksgiving and that prayer with every breath I have drawn. And I will continue to do so. But, oh! Lyon, all my passions, all my sufferings grew out of my great love for you.”
“I can well believe it, dear wife. And I myself have not been free from blame; though in reality your jealousy was very causeless, Sybil.”
“I know that now,” said Sybil, sadly.
“And now, dearest, I would like to make ‘a clean breast of it,’ as the sinners say, and tell you all—the whole ‘head and front of my offending’ with that poor dead woman,” said Mr. Berners, seating himself on the floor beside his wife.
Sybil did not repel his offered confidence, for though her jealousy had died a violent death, she was still very much interested in hearing his confession.
Then Lyon Berners told her everything, up to the very last moment when she had surprised them in the first and last kiss that had ever passed between them.