He came at length, looking really tired now, but speaking cheerfully as he entered the room.
“I have been gone from you a long time, dear Sybil, but I could not help it. I had to go to Portsmouth in search of our ship,” he said, as he put his hat on the floor, and sat down at the fire.
“Then you found a ship?” she inquired, with so much more than usual anxiety in her expression, that he looked up in painful surprise as he replied to her question.
“Yes, dear; I have found a ship that will suit us. It is the ‘Enterprise,’ Captain Wright, bound for Liverpool within a few days.”
“Oh! I wish it were to-morrow,” sighed Sybil.
“Why, love, what is the matter?” tenderly inquired her husband, taking her hand, and looking into her face.
“That is the matter,” replied Sybil, with a shudder, as she took the volume she had been reading from the chimney piece and put it in his hands.
It was a work with which Lyon Berners, as a law student, had been very familiar.
“Why, where did you get this?” he inquired in a tone of annoyance, for he felt at once what its effect upon Sybil’s mind must be.
“Oh, I found it behind the looking-glass in the other room.”