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.

[Illustration: "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 sh