It was a face trained to concealment, and yet so carefully tutored that at the first glance one only thought what an open, pleasant expression it had. Even after long intercourse and a thorough knowledge of the man's character, that face would have puzzled the most skillful observer.
Elizabeth Mellen was looking at him in a strange silence; whatever might have been in the past there was no spell now in those glorious eyes which could dazzle her soul into forgetfulness; shade after shade of repressed emotion passed over her features as she gazed, leaving them at last white and fixed as marble.
"You are pale," he said, "so changed."
She started as if he had struck her.
"I did not come here to talk of my appearance," she said.
"True," he replied, "very true; but I cannot help wondering. I think of that day when I saved your life——"
"If you had only let me die then!" she broke in passionately. "If God had only mercifully deprived you of all strength!"
"You were blooming and gay," he went on as if he had not heard her words. "Yes, you are changed since then."
"I will not hear these things," she cried; "I will not be made to look back upon what we all were then."
She closed her eyes in blind anguish; his words brought back with such terrible force the time of that meeting—the day but one before her marriage, when he had started up so fatally in her path, and never left it till this terrible moment.