How was it that he had suffered himself to love _her_?
Suffered! Love plays strange tricks, and it has fooled many a man as it was fooling Lionel Verner.
And what of Sibylla?
Sibylla did not love him.

The two ruling passions of her heart were vanity and ambition.

To be sometime the mistress of Verner's Pride was a very vista of desire, and therefore she encouraged Lionel.

She did not encourage him very much; she was rather in the habit of playing fast and loose with him; but that only served to rivet tighter the links of his chain.

All the love--such as it was!--that Sibylla West was capable of giving, was in possession of Frederick Massingbird.