“You, Olivia?” he cried, advancing.  “Surely this is a surprise!  My dearest, is it quite prudent in you to leave your room?”

He took the slender, white-robed figure in his arms, and kissed her as tenderly as a bridegroom of a week might have done.  Lady Kingsland laughed a soft, tinkling little laugh.

“A month is quite long enough to be a prisoner, Jasper, even although a prisoner of state.  And on my boy’s christening fete—­the son and heir I have desired so long—­ah, surely a weaker mother than I might essay to quit her room.”

The moody darkness, like a palpable frown, swept over the baronet’s face again at her words.

“Is he dressed?” he asked.

“He is dressed and asleep, and Lady Helen and Mr. Carlyon, his godmother and godfather, are hovering over the crib like twin guardian angels.  And Mildred sits en grande tenue on her cricket, in a speechless trance of delight, and nurse rustles about in her new silk gown and white lace cap with an air of importance and self-complacency almost indescribable.  The domestic picture only wants papa and mamma to make it complete.”

She laughed as she spoke, a little sarcastically; but Sir Jasper’s attempt even to smile was a ghastly failure.

Lady Kingsland folded both her hands on his shoulder, and looked up in his face with anxious, searching eyes.

“What is it?” she asked.

The baronet laughed uneasily.

“What is what?”

“This gloom, this depression, this dark, mysterious moodiness.  Jasper, what has changed you of late?”

“Mysterious moodiness! changed me of late!  Nonsense, Olivia!  I don’t know what you mean.”

Again he strove to laugh, and again it was a wretched failure.

Lady Kingsland’s light-blue eyes never left his face.

“I think you do, Jasper.  Since the night of our boy’s birth you have been another man.  What is it?”

A spasm crossed the baronet’s face; his lips twitched convulsively; his face slowly changed to a gray, ashen pallor.

“What is it?” the lady slowly reiterated.  “Surely my husband, after all these years, has no secrets from me?”

The tender reproach of her tone, of her eyes, stung the husband, who loved her, to the quick.

“For God’s sake, Olivia, don’t ask me!” he cried passionately.  “It would be sheerest nonsense in your eyes, I know.  You would but laugh at what half drives me mad!”

Jasper!”

“Don’t look at me with that reproachful face, Olivia!  It is true.  You would look upon it as sheerest folly, I tell you, and laugh at me for a credulous fool.”

“No,” said Lady Kingsland, quietly, and a little coldly.  “You know me better.  I could never laugh at what gives my husband pain.”

“Pain!  I have lived in torment ever since, and yet—­who knows?—­it may be absurdest jugglery.  But he told me the past so truly—­my very thoughts!  And no one could know what happened in Spain so many years ago!  Oh, I must believe it—­I can not help it—­and that belief will drive me mad!”