"Ah-ha! anything I please! It is easy to see what ails him. He lives upon love just now; but he'll care more about his bill of fare a few weeks hence," chuckled the landlord, as he left the public parlor to execute his guest's orders. The bridegroom was no sooner left alone with his bride than he seated her in the easiest arm-chair, and began with affectionate zeal to untie her bonnet-strings and unclasp her mantle. "You make my maid a useless appendage, dear Lyon," said the little lady, smiling up in his eyes. "Because I like to do everything for you myself, sweet Sybil; because I am jealous of every hand that touches your dear person, except my own," he murmured tenderly as he removed her bonnet, and with all his worshipping soul glowing through his eyes, gazed upon her beautiful and beaming face. "You love me so much, dear Lyon! You love me so much! Yet not too much either! for oh! if you should ever cease to love me, or even if you were ever to love me _less_,--I--I dare not think what I should do!" she muttered in a long, deep, shuddering tone. "Sweet Sybil," he breathed, drawing her to his bosom and pressing warm kisses on her crimson lips--"sweetest Sybil, it is not possible for the human heart to love _more_ than I do, but I can never love you less!" "I do believe you, dearest Lyon! With all my heart I do!--Yet--yet--" "Yet what, sweet love?" She lifted her face from his bosom and gazing intently in his eyes, said: "Yet, Lyon, if you knew the prayer that I never fail to put up, day and night! What do you think it is for, dear Lyon?" "I know; it is for Heaven's blessing to rest upon our wedded lives." "Yes, my prayer is for that always, of course! but that is not what I mean now! That is not the stronger, stronger prayer which I offer up from the deeps of my spirit in almost an agony of supplication!" "And what is that prayer, so awful in its earnestness, dear love?" "Oh, Lyon! it is _that you may never love me less than now, or if you should, that I may never live to know it_," she breathed with an intensity of suppressed emotion that drew all the glowing color from her crimson cheeks and lips and left them pale as marble. "Why, you beautiful mad creature! You are a true daughter of your house! A Berners of the burning heart! A Berners of the boiling blood! A Berners of whom it has been said, that it is almost as fatal to be loved, as to be hated, by one of them! Dear Sybil! never doubt my love; never be jealous of me, if you would not destroy us both," he earnestly implored. "I do not doubt you, dearest Lyon; I am not jealous of you! What cause, indeed, have I to be so? But--but----" "But what, my darling?"