At the most impassioned, most expressive passages of the music, Rosa Blondelle would lift her eloquent blue eyes to those of Lyon Berners, who responded to their language.
And Sybil stood in the shadow near them, with pallid cheeks, compressed lips, and glittering eyes—mute, still, full of repressed anguish and restrained fury.
Ah, Rosa Blondelle, take heed! Better that you should come between the lioness and her young than between Sybil Berners and her love!
Yet again, on this evening, this jealous wife, this strange young creature, so full of contradictions and inconsistencies; so strong, yet so weak; so confiding, yet so suspicious; so magnanimous, yet so vindictive; once again, I say, successfully exerted her wonderful powers of self-control, and endured the ordeal of that evening in silence, and at its close bade her guest good-night without betraying the anguish of her heart.
When she found herself alone with her husband in their chamber, her fortitude nearly forsook her, especially as he himself immediately opened the subject of their beautiful guest.
“She is perfectly charming,” said Mr. Berners. “Every day develops some new gift or grace of hers! My dear Sybil, you never did a better deed than in asking this lovely lady to our house. She will be an invaluable acquisition to our lonely fireside this winter.”
“You did not use to think our fireside was lonely! You used to be very jealous of our domestic privacy!” Sybil thought to herself; but she gave no expression to this thought. On the contrary, controlling herself, and steadying her voice with an effort, she said smilingly:
“If you had met this ‘lovely lady’ before you married me, and had found her also free, you would have made her your wife.”
“I! No, indeed!” impulsively and most sincerely answered Lyon Berners, as he raised his eyes in astonishment to the face of Sybil. But he could see nothing there. Her face was in deep shadow, where she purposely kept it to conceal its pallor and its tremor.
“But why, if you had met her before you married me, and found her free, why should you not have made her your wife?” persisted Sybil.