"Something has crossed her; something has crossed her very much," muttered her old father to himself, as he sat alone in his arm-chair in the warm chimney-corner of his favorite sitting-room. Yes, indeed, everything crossed her. She was unhappy for the first time in her life, and she thought it was clearly the duty of her father or some other one of her slaves to make her happy. She was kept waiting, and it was everybody's fault, and everybody should be made to suffer for it. It was no use to reason with Sybil Berners. One might as well have reasoned with a conflagration. It was about this time, too, that her aged father began to feel symptoms that warned him of the approach of that sudden death by congestion of the brain, which had terminated the existence of so many of his ancestors. More than ever he desired to see his motherless daughter well married before he should be called away from her. So, one evening, he sent for Sybil to come into his sitting-room, and when she obeyed his summons, and came and sat down on a low ottoman beside his arm-chair, he said, laying his hand lovingly on her black, curly head: "My darling, I am very old, and may be taken from you any day, any hour, and I would like to see you well married before I go." "Dear father, don't talk so. You may live twenty years yet," answered the daughter, with a blending of affectionate solicitude and angry impatience in her tones and looks, for Sybil was very fond of the old man, and also very intolerant of unpleasant subjects. "Well, well, my dear, since you prefer it, I will live twenty years longer to please you--_if I can_. But whether I live or die, my daughter, I wish to see you well married." "Ah, father, why can you not leave me free?" "Because, my darling, if anything should happen to me, you would be left utterly without protection; your hand would become the aim of every adventurer in the county; you would become the prey of some one among them who would squander your fortune, abuse your person, and break your heart." "You know very well, father, that I should break such a villain's head first. _I_ a victim--_I_ the prey of a fortune-hunter, or the slave of a brute! I look as if I was likely to be--do I not? Father, you insult your daughter by the thought," exclaimed Sybil, with flushing cheeks and flashing eyes. "There, there, my dear! don't flame up!" said the old man, laying his hand upon the fiery creature's head; "be quiet as you can, Sybil--I cannot bear excitement now, child."