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.