“I suppose you know best, my dear,” said Mr. Berners, as he referred to the visiting list and began to prepare for his task.
Sybil went to her dressing-glass and began to arrange her somewhat disordered hair. While she stood there, she suddenly inquired:
“Where did you leave Mrs. Blondelle?”
“I did not leave her anywhere. She left me. She excused herself, and went—to her room, I suppose.”
“Ah!” sighed Sybil. She did not like this answer. She was sorry to know that her husband had remained with the beauty until the beauty had left him. She tortured herself with the thought that, if Mrs. Blondelle had remained in the morning room, Mr. Berners would have been there at her side.
So morbid was now the condition of Sybil that a word was enough to arouse her jealousy, a caress sufficient to allay it. She would not leave Lyon to himself, she thought. He should know the difference between his wife and his guest in that particular. So the guest, being now in her own room, where her hostess heartily wished she might spend the greater portion of the day, Sybil felt free from the pressing duties of hospitality, at least for the time being; and so she drew a chair to the corner of the same table occupied by her husband, and she began to help him in his task by directing the envelopes, while he filled out the cards. Thus sitting together, working in unison, and conversing occasionally, they passed the morning—a happier morning than Sybil had seen for several days.
But of course they met their guest again at dinner, where Rosa Blondelle was as fascinating and Lyon Berners as much fascinated as before, and where Sybil’s mental malady returned in full force.
Oh, these transient fascinations, what eternal miseries they sometimes bring!
But a greater trial awaited the jealous wife in the evening, when they were all gathered in the drawing-room, and Rosa Blondelle, beautifully dressed, seated herself at the grand piano, and began to sing and play some of the impassioned songs from the Italian operas; and Lyon Berners, a very great enthusiast in music, hung over the siren, doubly entranced by her beauty and her voice. Sybil, too, stood with the little group at the piano; but she stood back in the shade, where the expression of her agonized face could not be seen by the other two, even if they had been at leisure to observe her. She was suffering the fiercest tortures of jealousy.
Sybil’s education had been neglected, as I have told you. She had a fine contralto voice and a perfect ear, but these were both uncultivated; and so she could only sing and play the simplest ballads in the language. She had often regretted her want of power to please the fastidious musical taste of her husband; but never so bitterly as now, when she saw that power in the possession of another, and that other a beauty, a rival, and an inmate of her house. Oh, how deeply she now deplored her short-sightedness in bringing this siren to her home!