I'll get you something cheerful." She whirled out of the room and
back in a series of those swift, nervous movements peculiar to her.
"There! that will amuse you, I know." She put the book down on the
table before Lemuel, who silently submitted to have it left there.
"It will distract your thoughts, if anything will. And I shall ask
you to let me sit just here in the reception-room, so that I can
call you if I feel alarmed."
"All right," said Lemuel, lapsing absently to his own troubled
thoughts.
"Thank you very much," said Sibyl. She went away, and came back
directly. "Don't you think," she asked, "that it's very strange you
should never have seen or heard anything of her?"
"Heard of who?" he asked, dragging himself painfully up from the
depths of his thoughts.
"That heartless girl who had you arrested."
"She _wasn't_ heartless!" retorted Lemuel indignantly.
"You think so because you are generous, and can't imagine such
heartlessness. Perhaps," added Sibyl, with the air of being
illumined by a happy thought, "she is dead. That would account for
everything. She may have died of remorse. It probably preyed upon
her till she couldn't bear it any longer, and then she killed
herself."
Lemuel began to grow red at the first apprehension of her meaning.
As she went on, he changed colour more and more.
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