This revelation then explained all to Sybil; all of their wanderings in strange places, and sudden departures from them, when unwelcome tourists who might have recognised Richard Trevelyan came, their secluded life at Porthellick, their marked avoidance of the Trecarrels and others, and on the whole poor Sybil felt cut to the heart, and inspired by not an atom of pride; yet she tenderly and fondly embraced her mother with greater fervour than ever, for more than ever did she feel that she must love her now.
"My poor papa drowned—drowned, unburied in the sea—passing away from us without even the name by which we have known and loved him!" exclaimed Sybil. "Oh why is God so cruel to us?"
"Alas, Sybil, we can but adore the decrees of Heaven, without seeking to know more of them. This stroke is hard to bear, child—all the harder that I have reason to fear—to dread, oh, my God, that more than your papa's life has perished with him."
"More mamma; what can be more?"
"That which was dearer to him than life; the succession of Denzil—the honour of us all!"
After a long pause, with a vague expression in her eyes, as if her thoughts were travelling back into the years of the past, Sybil said,
"I had begun to suspect there was some unpleasant mystery about us."
"But affection and delicacy——"
"Both, dearest mamma sealed my lips and I was silent; but oh, to what good end or purpose has it all been? By this, too surely is Audley also lost to me."
"My poor child, he was your lover, and through me you think you lose him. Oh pardon me, Sybil, darling, for I, your hapless mother, am the cause of all this! Had your papa never seen, or known, or loved me——"