Mr. Berners and Miss Pendleton walked up and down the corridor in restless anxiety.
"My brother was here to see me yesterday afternoon, Lyon," she said.
But Mr. Berners, absorbed in anxiety for his wife, scarcely heard the young lady's words, and certainly did not reply to them.
But Beatrix had something else to say to him, and so she said it:
"Lyon, if you should succeed in getting Sybil's pardon, (pardon for the crime she never committed!) and should decide to take her to Europe, do you know what Clement and myself have determined to do?"
"No," said Mr. Berners, with a weary sigh.
"We have decided to go abroad with you and share your fate; whether we go for a year or two of pleasant travelling and sight-seeing, or whether we go into perpetual exile."
Lyon Berners, who had been almost rudely indifferent to the young lady's words until this moment, now turned and looked at her with astonishment, admiration, and gratitude, all blended in the expression of his fine countenance.
"Beatrix! No! I appreciate your magnanimity! And I thank you even as much as I wonder at you! But you must not make this sacrifice for us," he said.
"Oh!" she said amid her sobs; "there can be nothing in the world so precious to us as our childhood's friendships! Clement and I have played with Sybil and you since we were able to go alone! We have no parents, nor sisters, nor brothers, to bind us to our home. We have only our childhood's friends that have grown up with us--you and Sybil. Clement will resign his commission in the army; he does not need it, you know, any more than his country now needs him; and we will let the old manor house, and go abroad with you!"
"But, dear Beatrix, to expatriate yourselves for us!"
"Oh, nonsense!" she said, brushing the bright tears from her blooming face. "You are trying to make this out an act of generosity on our part. It is no such thing. It is a piece of selfishness in us. It will be a very pleasant thing, let me tell you, to go to Europe, and travel about and see all the old historic countries, for a year or so."
"A year or so! Oh, Beatrix! it will not be a year or so, of pleasant travelling! It will be the exile of a life-time!"
"I don't believe it! I have more faith than that! I believe that