"Quite sure. Come and see how clear it is. You are not alarmed at the sheet lightning."

He put his arm round her, and led her to the window. As he said, the sky was clear again. Nearly all traces of the storm had passed away; there had been no rain with it; and, but for the remembrance of its sound in their ears, they might have believed that it had not taken place. The broad lands of Verner's Pride lay spreading out before them, the lawns and the terrace underneath; the sheet-lightning illumined the heavens incessantly, rendering objects nearly as clear as in the day.

Lionel held her to his side, his arm round her. She trembled still--trembled excessively; her bosom heaved and fell beneath his hand.

"When I die, it will be in a thunder-storm," she whispered.

"You foolish girl!" he said, his tone half a joking one, wholly tender.

"What can have given you this excessive fear of thunder, Sibylla?"

"I was always frightened at a thunder-storm. Deborah says mamma was. But I was not so _very_ frightened until a storm I witnessed in Australia.

It killed a man!" she added, shivering and nestling nearer to Lionel.

"Ah!"

"It was only a few days before Frederick left me, when he and Captain Cannonby went away together," she continued. "We had hired a carriage, and had gone out of the town ever so far. There was something to be seen there; I forget what now; races perhaps. I know a good many people went; and an awful thunder-storm came on. Some ran under the trees for shelter; some would not; and the lightning killed a man. Oh, Lionel, I shall never forget it! I saw him carried past; I saw his face! Since then I have felt ready to die myself with the fear."

She turned her face, and hid it upon his bosom. Lionel did not attempt to soothe the _fear_; he knew that for such fear time alone is the only cure. He whispered words of soothing to _her_; he stroked fondly her golden hair. In these moments, when she was gentle, yielding, clinging to him for protection, three parts of his old love for her would come back again. The lamp, which had been turned on to its full blaze of light, was behind them, so that they might have been visible enough to anybody standing in the nearer portion of the grounds.

"Captain Cannonby went away with Frederick Massingbird," observed Lionel, approaching by degrees to the questions he wished to ask. "Did they start together?"

"Yes. Don't talk about it, Lionel."

"My dear wife, I must talk about it," he gravely answered. "You have always put me off in this manner, so that I know little or nothing of the circumstances. I have a reason for wishing to become cognisant of those past particulars. Surely," he added, a shade of deeper feeling in his tone, "at this distance of time it cannot be so very painful to your feelings to speak of Frederick Massingbird. _I_ am by your side."

"What is the reason that you wish to know?"

"A little matter that regarded him and Cannonby. Was Cannonby with him when he died?"

Sibylla, subdued still, yielded to the wish as she would probably have yielded at no other time.

"Of course he was with him. They were but a day's journey from Melbourne. I forget the name of the place; a sort of small village or settlement, I believe, where the people halted that were going to, or returning from, the diggings. Frederick was taken worse as they got there, and in a few hours he died."

"Cannonby remaining with him?"

"Yes. I am sure I have told you this before, Lionel. I told it to you on the night of my return."

He was aware she had. He could not say: "But I wish to press you upon the points; to ascertain beyond doubt that Frederick Massingbird did really die; that he is not living." "Did Cannonby stay until he was buried?" he asked aloud.

"Yes."

"You are sure of this?"

Sibylla looked at him curiously. She could not think why he was recalling this; why want to know it?

"I am sure of it only so far as that Captain Cannonby told me so,"

replied Sibylla.

The reservation struck upon him with a chill; it seemed to be a confirmation of his worst fears. Sibylla continued, for he did not speak--

"Of course he stayed with him until he was buried. When Captain Cannonby came back to me at Melbourne, he said he had waited to lay him in the ground. Why should he have said it, if he did not?"

"True," murmured Lionel.

"He said the burial-service had been read over him. I remember that, well. I reproached Captain Cannonby with not having come back to me immediately, or sent for me that I might at least have seen him dead, if not alive. He excused himself by saying that he did not think I should like to see him; and he had waited to bury him before returning."

Lionel fell into a reverie. If this, that Captain Cannonby had stated, was correct, there was no doubt that Frederick Massingbird was safely dead and buried. But he could not be sure that it was correct; Captain Cannonby may not have relished waiting to see a dead man buried; although he had affirmed so much to Sibylla. A thousand pounds would Lionel have given out of his pocket at that moment, for one minute's interview with Captain Cannonby.

"Lionel!"

The call came from Sibylla with sudden intensity, half startling him.

She had got one of her fingers pointed to the lawn.

"Who's that--peeping forth from underneath the yew-tree?"

The same place, the same tree which had been pointed to by Lucy Tempest!

An impulse, for which Lionel could not have accounted, caused him to turn round and put out the lamp.

"Who can it be?" wondered Sibylla. "He appears to be watching us. How foolish of any of them to go out! _I_ should not feel safe under a tree, although that lightning is only sheet-lightning."

Every perceptive faculty that Lionel Verner possessed was strained upon the spot. He could make out a tall man; a man whose figure bore--unless his eyes and his imagination combined to deceive him--a strong resemblance to Frederick Massingbird's. Had it come to it? Were he and his rival face to face; was she, by his own side now, about to be bandied between them?--belonging, save by the priority of the first marriage ceremony, no more to one than to the other? A stifled cry, suppressed instantly, escaped his lips; his pulses stood still, and then throbbed on with painful violence.

"Can you discern him, Lionel?" she asked. "He is going away--going back amidst the trees. Perhaps because he can't see us any longer, now you have put the light out. Who is it? Why should he have stood there, watching us?"

Lionel snatched her to him with an impulsive gesture. He would have sacrificed his life willingly, to save Sibylla from the terrible misfortune that appeared to be falling upon her.

CHAPTER LIX.

A CASUAL MEETING ON THE RIVER.

A merry breakfast-table. Sibylla, for a wonder, up, and present at it.

The rain of the preceding day, the storm of the night had entirely passed away, and as fine a morning as could be wished was smiling on the earth.

"Which of you went out before the storm was over, and ventured under the great yew-tree?"

It was Mrs. Verner who spoke. She looked at the different gentlemen present, and they looked at her. They did not know what she meant.

"You _were_ under it, one of you," persisted Sibylla.

All, save one, protested that they had neither been out nor under the tree. That one--it happened to be Mr. Gordon, of whom casual mention has been made--confessed to having been on the lawn, so far as crossing it went; but he did not go near the tree.

"I went out with my cigar," he observed, "and had strolled some distance from the house when the storm came on. I stood in the middle of a field and watched it. It was grandly beautiful."

"I wonder you were not brought home dead!" ejaculated Sibylla.