"Do not say so, mamma dear," whispered Sybil as her mother's tremulous lips were pressed on her throbbing brow.
"It was a plan your papa formed to save his inheritance for you and Denzil, and already his brother claims all."
"It was a false plan, and see how it may fail us—nay already, to all appearance has failed us."
"He is in his grave—if indeed the ocean can be called a grave."
"True, my darling papa—and I must not upbraid him, even in thought."
"If it is the will of God that I should suffer, His will be done! But my children—my children!" cried the widow wildly, and she raised her hands and her dark and beautiful but bloodshot eyes to Heaven; "my brave and handsome Denzil, and my soft sweet Sybil, of what have they been guilty, that shame and ruin, should fall on them?"
"Mamma," whispered Sybil, embracing her closely, "we must learn to bear with resignation the woes we cannot help. But oh," added the girl in her heart, "how am I to write to Denzil of all this sorrow, and probably worse than sorrow and poverty?"
CHAPTER XX.
A FAMILY GROUP.
And so he was gone—this tender husband, who had loved her so dearly, and whose secret she had shared so unavailingly for years; and apart from the horror of the doubt that hung over the future of her children, whose means and honour, like her own, had too probably perished with him, a despair grew in the heart of Constance when she surveyed the familiar objects, the little household gods of their once happy home, and thought upon the days that could never, never come again.