"For a future of usefulness, if not of happiness; for a future of duty, if not of domestic joys," replied the captain, earnestly.
Footsteps were heard upon the stairs without, but no one heeded them.
"'Duty,' 'usefulness!'" bitterly echoed Lyon Berners. "I might indeed have lived and labored for them, and for my country and my kind, if—if—Oh, Sybil! Sybil! Oh, Sybil! Sybil! My young, sweet wife!" He broke off, and groaned with the insufferable, tearless agony of a strong man's grief.
"Here she is, marster! Bress de Lord, here she is, and Nelly too! Nelly found her!" frantically exclaimed Joe, bursting open the chamber door, while Sybil flew past him and threw herself with a sob of delight into the arms of her husband. His brain reeled with the sudden, overwhelming joy, as he clasped his wife to his heart.
"Good Heaven, man! why did you not prepare your master for this?" was the first question Captain Pendleton thought of asking the negro.
Joe stared, and found nothing to answer. He did not understand preparation.
Nelly jumped upon the bed, and insisted upon being recognized; but nobody noticed her. Noble humanity is singularly ungrateful to their four-footed friends.
Lyon Berners, forgetful of everybody and everything else in the world, was gazing fondly, wonderingly into his wife's beautiful pale face. His face was like marble.
"My own, my own," he murmured. "By what miracle have you been preserved?"
Sybil could not answer; she could only sob for joy at this reunion, forgetful, poor child, of the awful danger in which she still stood.