"Speak, and tell me! Speak, for I must know—I have a right to know?" cried Sibyl, grasping her arm, and setting her teeth hard to keep down the tempest of passion that was sweeping through her soul.
"Oh, spare me—spare me!" wailed Christie, lifting up her pleading hands.
"Death, girl! Must I tear the truth from your false heart! Tell me, truly, has he dared to speak of love, and have you dared to listen to him? Heavens! will you speak before I am tempted to murder you!"
"Oh, do not ask me—do not ask me!" cried Christie, in a dying voice, as trembling, fainting, she sank at the feet of her terrible foe.
With her hands clenched until the nails sank into the quivering flesh, her teeth set hard, her deep, labored breathing, her passion-convulsed face, she looked more like an enraged pythoness than a frail girl learning for the first time her lover's infidelity.
She required no further proof now. He whom she would have trusted with her soul's salvation was false. And, oh! what is there more terrible in this world than to learn that one whom we love and trust has proven untrue?
Sibyl had loved as she had done everything else—madly; had trusted blindly; had worshipped idolatrously, adoring man instead of God; and now this awakening was doubly terrible. Had Christie been in her place, she would have wept and sobbed in the utter abandon of sorrow; but her grief would have been nothing compared with the dry, burning despair in those wild black eyes.
Now that Sibyl had learned the worst, her fiery, tempestuous fierceness passed away, and there fell a great calm—a calm all the more terrific after her late storm of passion.
"And so I am forsaken," she said, in a deep, hollow voice, "and for her—this pretty, blue-eyed baby. I, whom he promised to love through life and beyond death. Saints in heaven! shall he do this and live?"
"You?" said Christie, lifting her pale, terrified face. "And did he promise to love you, too?"