In another minute the landlord re-entered the room.
"Mrs. Blondelle's thanks and compliments, and she will be very grateful
for Mrs. Berners' visit, as soon as Mrs. Berners pleases to come," was
the message that Mr. Judson brought.
Sybil arose with a smile, kissed her hand playfully to her husband, and
passed out of the room.
The landlord went before her, rapped at the opposite door, then opened
it, announced the visitor, and closed it behind her.
Sybil advanced a step into the stranger's apartment, and then paused in
involuntary admiration.
She had heard and read of celebrated beauties, whose charms had
conquered the wisest statesmen and the bravest warriors, who had
governed monarchs and ministers, and raised or ruined kingdoms and
empires. And often in poetic fancy she had tried to figure to herself
one of these fairy forms and faces. But never, in her most romantic
moods, had she imagined a creature so perfectly beautiful as this one
that she saw before her.
The stranger had a form of the just medium size, and of the most perfect
proportions; a head of stately grace; features small, delicate, and
clearly cut; a complexion at once fair and rosy, like the inside of an
apple blossom; lips like opening rose-buds; eyes of dark azure blue,
fringed with long dark eye-lashes, and over-arched by slender, dark
eyebrows; and hair of a pale, glistening, golden hue that fell in soft,
bright ringlets, like a halo around her angelic face. She wore a robe of
soft, pale, blue silk, that opened over a white silk skirt.
She arose with an exquisite grace to welcome her visitor.
"It is very good of you, madam, to come to see me in my misery," she
murmured, in a sweet, pathetic tone that went to her visitor's heart, as
she sat a chair, and, by a graceful gesture invited her to be seated.
Sybil was herself impulsive and confiding, as well as romantic and
generous. She immediately drew her chair up to the side of the strange
lady, took her hand affectionately, and tried to look up in her eyes, as
she said: "We are personal strangers to each other; but we are the children of one
Father, and sisters who should care for each other."
"Ah! who would care to claim sisterhood with such a wretch as I am?"
sighed the unhappy young creature.
"I would; but you must not call yourself ill-names. Misfortunes are
not sins. I came here to comfort and help you--to comfort and help you
not in words merely, but in deeds; and I have both the power and the
will to do it, if you will please to let me try," said Sybil, gently.
The young creature looked up, her lovely, tearful, blue eyes expanded
with astonishment.