"Dear Lyon, how came you here so soon after your dreadful accident, and at such a risk to your life?"
"My dearest Sybil, what led you to give yourself up?"
These questions were simultaneously asked of each other by the husband and wife, as soon as they were fairly upon their journey.
Then their eyes met, and despite the gravity of their position, both smiled.
"Whose question shall be answered first?" inquired Lyon.
"Oh! mine! mine!" exclaimed Sybil; "tell me, dear Lyon, how it is that you are able to be here at all. The bailiffs indeed told me that you were not dangerously injured; if it had not been for that assurance, I should have died with anxiety; but still I had every reason to suppose that you were very seriously injured. How could you get up so soon? How could you bear the stage-coach journey? Are you sure that it has not endangered your life?"
"My dearest Sybil, no," said Mr. Berners, answering her last question first. "On the contrary, it has saved it; for if I had remained in Baltimore in that terrible state of anxiety about you, I should certainly have fallen into a brain-fever. My injuries were not nearly so severe as they seemed. The blow stunned me, and cut my scalp in a glancing way. It bled very profusely, so that the great flow of blood probably saved me from a fit of illness, at the least."
"But the jarring journey by the coach?"
"I did not come that way. I came by water."
"Oh! I forget that you could come so. Go on."