“I love you far better than ever,” he answered, his voice becoming hoarse with emotion.  “I have been striving to forget you ever since that cruel time; and not until to-night did I know how utterly futile has been the strife.  You will let me love you! you will help me to blot out its remembrance!”

She drew a long, deep sigh, like one who is relieved from some wearing pain, and laid her head down again as he had placed it.  “I can love you better than I loved him,” she breathed, in a low whisper.

“Sibylla, why did you leave me?  Why did you marry him?”

“Oh, Lionel, don’t reproach me!—­don’t reproach me!” she answered, bursting into tears.  “Papa made me.  He did, indeed.”

“He made you!  Dr. West?”

“I liked Frederick a little.  Yes, I did; I will not deny it.  And oh, how he loved me!  All the while, Lionel, that you hovered near me—­never speaking, never saying that you loved—­he told me of it incessantly.”

“Stay, Sibylla.  You could not have mistaken me.”

“True.  Yours was silent love; his was urgent.  When it came to the decision, and he asked me to marry him, and to go out to Australia, then papa interfered.  He suspected that I cared for you—­that you cared for me; and he—­he—­”

Sibylla stopped and hesitated.

“Must I tell you all?” she asked.  “Will you never, never repeat it to papa, or reproach him?  Will you let it remain a secret between us?”

“I will, Sibylla.  I will never speak upon the point to Dr. West.”

“Papa said that I must choose Frederick Massingbird.  He told me that Verner’s Pride was left to Frederick, and he ordered me to marry him.  He did not say how he knew, it—­how he heard it; he only said that it was so.  He affirmed that you were cut off with nothing, or next to nothing; that you would not be able to take a wife for years—­perhaps never.  And I weakly yielded.”

A strangely stern expression had darkened Lionel’s face.  Sibylla saw it, and wrung her hands.

“Oh, don’t blame me!—­don’t blame me more than you can help!  I know how weak, how wrong it was; but you cannot tell how entirely obedient we have always been to papa.”

“Dr. West became accidentally acquainted with the fact that the property was left away from me,” returned Lionel, in a tone of scorn he could not entirely suppress.  “He made good use, it seems, of his knowledge.”

“Do not blame me!” she reiterated.  “It was not my fault.”

“I do not blame you, my dearest.”

“I have been rightly served,” she said, the tears streaming down.  “I married him, pressed to it by my father, that I might share in Verner’s Pride; and, before the news came out that Verner’s Pride was ours, he was dead.  It had lapsed to you, whom I rejected!  Lionel, I never supposed that you would cast another thought to me; but, many a time have I felt that I should like to kneel and ask your forgiveness.”