Over and over again she ground these words through her teeth, or other words of the same sort. Suddenly she passed out of the narrow passage into the broad ball, where she noticed that the parlor door was ajar, a light burning within the room, and the shadow of a man thrown across the carpet. She stole to the door, peeped in, and saw Lyon Berners still standing on the rug with his back to the smouldering fire, absorbed in sombre thought. She slipped in, and dropped her head upon his shoulder and sobbed. Startled and very much annoyed, he gently tried to raise her head and put her away. But she only clung the closer, and sobbed the more. "Rosa! don't! don't, child! Let us have no more of this! It is sinful and dangerous! For your own sake, Rosa, retire to your room!" he gently expostulated. "Oh! you love me no longer! You love me no longer!" vehemently exclaimed the siren. "That cruel woman has compelled you to forsake me! I told you she would do it, and now she has done it." "'That woman,' Rosa, is my beloved wife, entitled to my whole faith; yet not even for her will I forsake you; but I will continue to care for you, as a brother for a sister. But, Rosa, this must cease," he gravely added. "Oh, do not say that! do not! do not fling off the poor lonely heart that you have once gathered to your own!" and she clung to him as closely and wept as wildly as if she had been in earnest. "Rosa! Rosa!" he whispered eagerly, and in great embarrassment, "my child! be reasonable! Reflect! you have a husband!" "Ah! name him not! He robbed and left me, and I hate him," she cried. "And I have a dear and honored wife whose happiness I must guard. Thus you see we can be nothing to each other but brother and sister. A brother's love and care is all that I can offer you, or that you should be willing to accept from me," he continued, as he gently smoothed her fair hair. "Then give me a brother's kiss," she sighed. "That is not much to ask, and I have no one to kiss me now! So give me a brother's kiss, and let me go!" she pleaded, plaintively. He hesitated for a moment, and then bending over her, he said: "It is the _first_, and for your own sake it must be the _last_, Rosa!" he pressed his lips to hers. It _was_ the last as well as the first; for at the meeting of their lips, they were stricken asunder as by the fall of a thunderbolt! And Sybil, blazing with wrath, like a spirit from the Lake of Fire, stood between them! Yes! for she looked not human--with her ashen cheeks, and darkened brow, and flaming eyes--with her whole face and form heaving, palpitating, flashing forth the lightnings of anger! "SYBIL!" exclaimed her husband, thunderstruck, appalled. She waved her hand towards him, as if to implore or command silence.