"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!"
Lady Kingsland stood looking and listening, in pale wonder.
"I don't understand a word of this," she said, slowly. "Will you tell me, Sir Jasper, or am I to understand you have secrets your wife may not share?"
"My own dear wife," he said--"my best beloved--Heaven knows, if I have one secret from you, I keep it that I may save you sorrow. Not one cloud should ever darken the sunshine of your sky, if I had my way. You are right--I have a secret--a secret of horror, and dread, and dismay--a terrible secret that sears my brain and burns my heart! Olivia, my darling, its very horror prevents my telling it to you!"
"Does it concern our boy?" she asked, quickly.
"Yes!" with a groan. "Now you can understand its full terror. It menaces the son I love more than life. I thought to keep it from you; I tried to appear unchanged; but it seems I have failed miserably."
"And you will not tell me what this secret is?"