CHAPTER XIX.
MISS SILVER PLAYS HER FIRST CARD.
It was all very well for Sir Everard Kingsland to ride his high horse in the presence of Miss Sybilla Silver, and superbly rebuke her suspicions of his wife, but her words had planted their sting, nevertheless.
He loved his beautiful, imperious, gray-eyed wife with so absorbing and intense a love that the faintest doubt of her was torture inexpressible.
"I remember it all now," he said to himself, setting his teeth; "she was agitated at sight of that picture.

She turned, with the strangest look in her face I ever saw there, to the American, and rose abruptly from the table immediately after.

She has not been herself since; she has not once left her room.

Is she afraid of meeting that man?
Is there any secret in her life that he shares?
What do I know of her past life, save that she has been over the world with her father?
Good Heaven! if she and this man should have a secret between them, after all!" The cold drops actually stood on his brow at the thought.

The fierce, indomitable pride of his haughty race and the man's own inward jealousy made the bare suspicion agony.