THE THUNDER-STORM.
A wet walk back Lionel certainly had; but, wet or dry, it was all the same in his present distressed frame of mind. Arrived at Verner's Pride, he found his wife dressed for dinner, and the centre of a host of guests gay as she was. No opportunity, then, to question her about Frederick Massingbird's death, and how far Captain Cannonby was cognisant of the particulars.
He had to change his own things. It was barely done by dinner-time; and he sat down to table, the host of many guests. His brow was smooth, his speech was courtly; how could any of them suspect that a terrible dread was gnawing at his heart? Sibylla, in a rustling silk dress and a coronet of diamonds, sat opposite to him, in all her dazzling beauty. Had she suspected what might be in store for her, those smiles would not have chased each other so incessantly on her lips.
Sibylla went up to bed early. She was full of caprices as a wayward child. Of a remarkably chilly nature—as is the case, sometimes, where the constitution is delicate—she would have a fire in her dressing-room night and morning all the year round, even in the heat of summer. It pleased her this evening to desert her guests suddenly; she had the headache, she said.
The weather on this day appeared to be as capricious as Sibylla, as strangely curious as the great fear which had fallen upon Lionel. The fine morning had changed to the rainy, misty, chilly afternoon; the afternoon to a clear, bright evening; and that evening had now become overcast with portentous clouds.
Without much warning the storm burst forth; peals of thunder reverberated through the air, flashes of forked lightning played in the sky. Lionel hastened upstairs; he remembered how these storms terrified his wife.
She had knelt down to bury her head amidst the soft cushions of a chair when Lionel entered her dressing-room. "Sibylla!" he said.
Up she started at the sound of his voice, and flew to him. There lay her protection; and in spite of her ill-temper and her love of aggravation, she felt and recognised it. Lionel held her in his sheltering arms, bending her head down upon his breast, and drawing his coat over it, so that she might see no ray of light—as he had been wont to do in former storms. As a timid child was she at these times, humble, loving, gentle; she felt as if she were on the threshold of the next world, that the next moment might be her last. Others have been known to experience the same dread in a thunder-storm; and, to be thus brought, as it were, face to face with death, takes the spirit out of people.
He stood, patiently holding her. Every time the thunder burst above their heads, he could feel her heart beat against his. One of her arms was round him; the other he held; all wet it was with fear. He did not speak; he only clasped her closer every now and then, that she might be reminded of her shelter.