CHAPTER LXXXI.

A CRISIS IN SIBYLLA'S LIFE.

Sibylla Verner improved neither in health nor in temper. Body and mind were alike diseased. As the spring had advanced, her weakness appeared to increase; the symptoms of consumption became more palpable. She would not allow that she was ill; she, no doubt, thought that there was nothing serious the matter with her; nothing, as she told everybody, but the vexing after Verner's Pride.

Dr. West had expressed an opinion that her irritability, which she could neither conceal nor check, was the result of her state of health. He was very likely right. One thing was certain; that since she grew weaker and worse, this unhappy frame of mind had greatly increased. The whole business of her life appeared to be to grumble, to be cross, snappish, fretful. If her body was diseased, most decidedly her temper was also.

The great grievance of quitting Verner's Pride she made a plea for the indulgence of every complaint under the sun. She could no longer gather a gay crowd of visitors around her; she had lost the opportunity with Verner's Pride; she could no longer indulge in unlimited orders for new dresses and bonnets, and other charming adjuncts to the toilette, without reference to how they were to be paid for; she had not a dozen servants at her beck and call; and if she wanted to pay a visit, there was no elegant equipage, the admiration of all beholders, to convey her.

She had lost all with Verner's Pride. Not a day--scarcely an hour--passed, but one or other, or all of these vexations, were made the subject of fretful, open repining. Not to Lady Verner--Sibylla would not have dared to annoy her; not to Decima or to Lucy; but to her husband.

How weary his ear was, how weary his spirit, no tongue could tell. She tried him in every way--she did nothing but find fault with him. When he stayed out, she grumbled at him for staying, meeting him with reproaches on his entrance; when he remained in, she grumbled at him. In her sad frame of mind it was essential--there are frames of mind in which it _is_ essential, as the medical men will tell you, where the sufferer cannot help it--that she should have some object on whom to vent her irritability. Not being in her own house, there was but her husband. He was the only one sufficiently nearly connected with her to whom the courtesies of life could be dispensed with; and therefore he came in for it all. At Verner's Pride there would have been her servants to share it with him; at Dr. West's there would have been her sisters; at Lady Verner's there was her husband alone. Times upon times Lionel felt inclined to run away; as the disobedient boys run to sea.

The little hint, dropped by Dr. West, touching the past, had not been without its fruits in Sibylla's mind. It lay and smouldered there. _Had_ Lionel been attached to Lucy?--had there been love-scenes, love-making between them? Sibylla asked herself the questions ten times in a day.

Now and then she let drop a sharp, acrid bit of venom to him--his "old love, Lucy." Lionel would receive it with impassibility, never answering.

On the day spoken of in the last chapter, when Matthew Frost was dying, she was more ill at ease, more intensely irritable, than usual. Lady Verner had gone with some friends to Heartburg, and was not expected home until night; Decima and Lucy walked out in the afternoon, and Sibylla was alone. Lionel had not been home since he went out in the morning to see Matthew Frost. The fact was Lionel had had a busy day of it: what with old Matthew and what with his conversation with John Massingbird afterwards, certain work which ought to have been done in the morning he had left till the afternoon. It was nothing unusual for him to be out all day; but Sibylla was choosing to make his being out on this day an unusual grievance. As the hours of the afternoon passed on and on, and it grew late, and nobody appeared, she could scarcely suppress her temper, her restlessness. She was a bad one to be alone; had never liked to be alone for five minutes in her life; and thence perhaps the secret of her having made so much of a companion of her maid, Benoite. In point of fact, Sibylla Verner had no resources within herself; and she made up for the want by indulging in her naturally bad temper.

Where were they? Where was Decima? Where was Lucy? Above all, where was Lionel? Sibylla, not being able to answer the questions, suddenly began to get up a pretty little plot of imagination--that Lucy and Lionel were somewhere together. Had Sibylla possessed one of Sam Weller's patent self-acting microscopes, able to afford a view through space and stairs and deal doors, she might have seen Lionel seated alone in the study at Verner's Pride, amidst his leases and papers; and Lucy in Clay Lane, paying visits with Decima from cottage to cottage. Not possessing one of those admirable instruments--if somebody at the West End would but set up a stock of them for sale, what a lot of customers he'd have!--Sibylla was content to cherish the mental view she had conjured up, and to improve upon it. All the afternoon she kept improving upon it, until she worked herself up to that agreeable pitch of distorted excitement when the mind does not know what is real, and what fancy. It was a regular April day; one of sunshine and storm; now the sun shining out bright and clear; now, the rain pattering against the panes; and Sibylla wandered from room to room, upstairs and down, as stormy as the weather.

_Had_ her dreams been types of fact? Upon glancing from the window, during a sharper shower than any they had yet had, she saw her husband coming in at the large gates, Lucy Tempest on his arm, over whom he was holding an umbrella. They were walking slowly; conversing, as it seemed, confidentially. It was quite enough for Mrs. Verner.

But it was a very innocent, accidental meeting, and the confidential conversation was only about the state of poor old Matthew Frost. Lionel had taken Clay Lane on his road home for the purpose of inquiring after old Matthew. There, standing in the kitchen, he found Lucy. Decima was with the old man, and it was uncertain how long she would stay with him; and Lucy, who had no umbrella, was waiting for the shower to be over to get back to Deerham Court. Lionel offered her the shelter of his. As they advanced through the courtyard, Lucy saw Sibylla at the small drawing-room window--the ante-room, as it was called--and nodded a smiling greeting to her. She did not return it, and Lionel saw that his wife looked black as night.

They came in, Lucy untying her bonnet-strings, and addressing Sibylla in a pleasant tone--

"What a sharp storm!" she said. "And I think it means to last, for there seems no sign of its clearing up. I don't know how I should have come, but for Mr. Verner's umbrella."

No reply from Mrs. Verner.

"Decima is with old Matthew Frost," continued Lucy, passing into the drawing-room; "she desired that we would not wait dinner for her."

Then began Sibylla. She turned upon Lionel in a state of perfect fury, her temper, like a torrent, bearing down all before it--all decency, all consideration.

"Where have you been? You and she?"

"Do you allude to Lucy?" he asked, pausing before he replied, and looking at her with surprise. "We have been nowhere. I saw her at old Frost's as I came by, and brought her home."

"It is a falsehood!" raved Sibylla. "You are carrying on a secret intimacy with each other. I have been blind long enough, but--"

Lionel caught her arm, pointing in stern silence to the drawing-room door, which was not closed, his white face betraying his inward agitation.

"She is there!" he whispered. "She can hear you."

But Sibylla's passion was terrible--not to be controlled. All the courtesies of life were lost sight of--its social usages were as nothing. She flung Lionel's hand away from her.

"I hope she can hear me!" broke like a torrent from her trembling lips.

"It is time she heard, and others also! I have been blind, I say, long enough. But for papa, I might have gone on in my blindness to the end."

How was he to stop it? That Lucy must hear every word as plainly as he did, he knew; words that fell upon his ear, and blistered them. There was no egress for her--no other door--she was there in a cage, as may be said. He did what was the best to be done under the circumstances; he walked into the presence of Lucy, leaving Sibylla to herself.

At least it might have been the best in some cases. It was not in this.

Sibylla, lost in that moment to all sense of the respect due to herself, to her husband, to Lucy, allowed her wild fancies, her passion, to over-master everything; and she followed him in. Her eyes blazing, her cheeks aflame, she planted herself in front of Lucy.

"Are you not ashamed of yourself, Lucy Tempest, to wile my husband from me?"

Lucy looked perfectly aghast. That she thought Mrs. Verner had suddenly gone mad, may be excused to her. A movement of fear escaped her, and she drew involuntary nearer to Lionel, as if for protection.

"No! you shan't go to him! There has been enough of it. You shall not side with him against me! He is my husband! How dare you forget it! You are killing me amongst you."

"I--don't--know--what--you--mean, Mrs. Verner," gasped Lucy, the words coming in jerks from her bloodless lips.

"Can you deny that he cares for you more than he does for me? That you care for him in return? Can not you--"!

"Be silent, Sibylla!" burst forth Lionel. "Do you know that you are speaking to Miss Tempest?"

"I won't be silent!" she reiterated, her voice rising to a scream. "Who is Lucy Tempest that you should care for her? You know you do! and you know that you meant to marry her once! Is it--"

Pushing his wife on a chair, though gently, with one arm, Lionel caught the hand of Lucy, and placed it within the other, his chest heaving with emotion. He led her out of the room and through the ante-room, in silence to the door, halting there. She was shaking all over, and the tears were coursing down her cheeks. He took both her hands in his, his action one of deprecating entreaty, his words falling in the tenderest accents from between his bloodless lips.

"Will you _bear_ for my sake, Lucy? She is my wife. Heaven knows, upon any other I would retort the insult."

How Lucy's heart was wrung!--wrung for him. The insult to herself she could afford to ignore; being innocent, it fell with very slender force; but she felt keenly for his broken peace. Had it been to save her life, she could not help returning the pressure of his hand as she looked up to him her affirmative answer; and she saw no wrong or harm in the pressure. Lionel closed the door upon her, and returned to his wife.

A change had come over Sibylla. She had thrown herself at full length on a sofa, and was beginning to sob. He went up to her, and spoke gravely, not unkindly, his arms folded before him.

"Sibylla, when is this line of conduct to cease? I am nearly wearied out--nearly," he repeated, putting his hand to his brow, "wearied out.

If I could bear the exposure for myself, I cannot bear it for my wife."

She rose up and sat down on the sofa facing him. The hectic of her cheeks had turned to scarlet.

"You do love her! You care for her more than you care for me. Can you deny it?"

"What part of my conduct has ever told you so?"

"I don't care for conduct," she fractiously retorted, "I remember what papa said, and that's enough. He said he saw how it was in the old days--that you loved her. What business had you to love her?"

"Stay, Sibylla! Carry your reflections back, and answer yourself. In those old days, when both of you were before me to choose--at any rate, to _ask_--I chose _you_, leaving her. Is it not a sufficient answer?"

Sibylla threw back her head on the sofa-frame, and began to cry.

"From the hour that I made you my wife, I have striven to do my duty by you, tenderly as husband can do it. Why do you force me to reiterate this declaration, which I have made before?" he added, his face working with emotion. "Neither by word nor action have I been false to you. I have never, for the briefest moment, been guilty behind your back of that which I would not be guilty of in your presence. No! my allegiance of duty has never swerved from you. So help me Heaven!"

"You can't swear to me that you don't love her?" was Sibylla's retort.

It appeared that he did not intend to swear it. He went and stood against the mantel-piece, in his old favourite attitude, leaning his elbow on it and his face upon his hand--a face that betrayed his inward pain. Sibylla began again: to tantalise him seemed a necessity of her life.

"I might have expected trouble when I consented to marry you. Rachel Frost's fate might have taught me the lesson."

"Stay," said Lionel, lifting his head. "It is not the first hint of the sort that you have given me. Tell me honestly what it is you mean."