"Need you ask? There is only one point upon which news could greatly interest either of us, just now. I have seen Cannonby. He is here, and--" "Here! At Verner's Pride?" she interrupted. "Oh, I shall like to see Cannonby; to talk over old Australian times with him." Who was to account for her capricious moods? Lionel remembered the evening, during the very moon not yet dark to the earth, when Sibylla had made a scene in the drawing-room, saying she could not bear to hear the name of Cannonby, or to be reminded of the past days in Melbourne. She was turning to fly to the house, but Lionel caught her. "Wait, wait, Sibylla! Will you not hear the good tidings I have for you? Cannonby says there cannot be a doubt that Frederick Massingbird is dead. He left him dead and buried, as he told you in Melbourne. We have been terrified and pained--I trust--for nothing." "Lionel, look here," said she, receiving the assurance in the same equable manner that she might have heard him assert it was a fine day, or a wet one, "I have been making up my mind not to let this bother worry me. That wretched old maid Deborah went on to me with such rubbish this morning about leaving you, about leaving Verner's Pride, that she vexed me to anger. I came home and cried; and Benoite found me lying upon the sofa; and when I told her what it was, she said the best plan was, not to mind, to meet it with a laugh, instead of tears--" "Sibylla!" he interposed in a tone of pain. "You surely did not make a confidante of Benoite!" "Of course I did," she answered, looking as if surprised at his question, his tone. "Why not? Benoite cheered me up, I can tell you, better than you do. 'What matter to cry?' she asked. 'If he does come back, you will still be the mistress of Verner's Pride.' And so I shall." Lionel let go her hands. She sped off to the house, eager to find Captain Cannonby. He--her husband--leaned against the trunk of a tree, bitter mortification in his face, bitter humiliation in his heart. Was this the wife to whom he had bound himself for ever? Well could he echo in that moment Lady Verner's reiterated assertion, that she was not worthy of him. With a stifled sigh that was more like a groan, he turned to follow her. "Be still, be still!" he murmured, beating his hand upon his bosom, that he might still its pain. "Let me bear on, doing my duty by her always in love!" That pretty Mrs. Jocelyn ran up to Lionel, and intercepted his path. Mrs. Jocelyn would have liked to intercept it more frequently than she did, if she had but received a little encouragement. She tried hard for it, but it never came. One habit, at any rate, Lionel Verner had not acquired, amid the many strange examples of an artificial age--that of not paying considerate respect, both in semblance and reality, to other men's wives. "Oh, Mr. Verner, what a truant you are! You never come to pick up our arrows."