Yet they all knew her in an instant.
The scene that followed is indescribable, unimaginable.
Forgotten was the dying man! Unseen was Lyon Berners, whose fine form filled up the door-way.
They crowded around her, they caressed her, they cried over her, they exclaimed about her, they asked her a score of questions, and without waiting for a single answer asked her a hundred others.
"God bless my dear old home, and all the people in it!" were the first words that Sybil spoke after she was permitted to catch her breath.
"And you, my darling, you! God bless you in coming home!" fervently exclaimed the old woman.
"Now, where is my child; Mrs. Winterose? Where is my Gem?" the lady inquired, looking eagerly around the room.
"Gem, come here," said the dame.
And the beautiful young girl who had been timidly lingering in the background, yet with some suspicion of the lady's identity too, came modestly forward, and was silently folded in the arms of her mother.
A moment they clung thus; and then Sybil lifted the young head from her bosom, and holding it between her hands gazed tenderly down in the sweet face.