CHAPTER VII.
DOWN IN THE DARK VALE.
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Where rose the mountains, there for her were friends, Where fell the valley, therein was her home; Where the steep rock and dizzy peak ascends, She had the passion and the power to roam. The crag, the forest, cavern, torrent’s foam, Were unto her companions, and they spake A natural language clearer than the tone Of her best books, which she would oft forsake For Nature’s pages, lit by moonbeams on the lake.—Byron. |
Jealousy, once called to life in any human heart, is not easily to be destroyed. Sybil Berners’ almost unconscious jealousy suddenly called into existence, and as suddenly soothed to sleep, was awakened again by something that occurred just as the travellers were about to start.
It was the merest trifle, yet one of those trifles which turn the course of fate just as surely as the little switch of the railroad controls the direction of the train.
The travellers were just entering the stage-coach. Mr. Berners handed in first Mrs. Blondelle, then Mrs. Berners, and then he himself entered.
“You sit down here in this right-hand corner, Lyon, dear, and I will sit in the middle next to you, and Mrs. Blondelle shall sit in the left-hand corner next to me,” said Sybil, still standing while she pointed out their several places on the back seat; and she spoke perhaps under the influence of a latent jealousy, that instigated her to place herself between her husband and her guest, for that long journey.
“No, no, my dear, not so; but if you will change places with me and take the right-hand corner-seat, while our fair friend occupies the left-hand one, I will sit between you two ladies, the proverbial ‘thorn between two roses,’” replied Lyon Berners, gayly and gallantly, with perhaps on his side a latent desire to sit next the beautiful blonde, but also quite unconscious of how these words had disappointed and wounded her whom he would not have willingly wronged for the world.
Sybil silently took her seat, leaving the others to follow her example. Mr. Berners politely put Mrs. Blondelle in the left-hand corner, and then seated himself in the middle seat, between his wife and her guest.