All the missing bodies had been recovered, and had received Christian burial, except those of Sybil Berners and her young child, neither of which had yet been found, or even heard of—a circumstance that led many to think that the mother and babe had been rescued and concealed by her friends.
And for many weeks Miss Tabby had lain prostrated in body and idiotic in mind, and thus totally unable to give any account of them.
Lyon Berners' anxiety and suspense gradually settled into deep melancholy and despondency. As a matter of duty, he managed the estate as if Sybil or her child might one day reappear to enjoy it.
It may be remembered that when Lyon Howe, the young barrister, married Sybil Berners, the wealthy heiress, by the conditions of the marriage contract he took her family name, that it might not become extinct.
As an offset to this sacrifice on his part, it was stipulated in the instrument that, in case of his wife dying before him, without leaving children, he should inherit her whole property.
This, in the present state of affairs, gave him all the power he needed in the management of the great Black Valley Manor.
He lived at Black Hall, doing his duty for duty's sake, a very lonely man.
Now that Sybil was gone, the neighbors were all disposed to be too good to him. They visited him, and invited him out. But with a just resentment he declined all visits, and all invitations, except from those devoted friends who had been faithful to his wife in the time of her trouble: Clement and Beatrix Pendleton, young Sheridan the lawyer, old Mr. Fortescue the sheriff, and Robert Munson the soldier.
Miss Tabby at length rose from her bed of illness, and, to use her mother's words, "was able to creep about the house," but in a state of mental imbecility, which is not an unusual effect of a long, low type of typhoid fever. She was obstinate too, "obstinate as a mule," her sister said. No one could get a word of satisfaction from her upon the mysterious subject of Sybil's fate. When asked by Mr. Berners how she was saved, she answered:
"I was picked up by a man in a boat."