"But I never can guess," she replied, seeming to enter into the spirit of the thing.
"You try, Grant. Come, do credit to your Yankee descent!"
He rose suddenly and stood looking full in his wife's face, fixing her glance with a quick thrill of terror, which the least thing unusual in his manner caused her now.
Elsie began to dance up and down before the hearth, exclaiming:
"Oh! you provoking things—you stupid owls! Now do guess—oh! Grant, just try. Tell me what I have found."
Mellen's eyes had not moved from his wife's face.
"Have you found Elizabeth's bracelet?" he asked in a tone which made the unhappy woman shiver from head to foot, and startled Elsie out of her playfulness.
"Why, how did you think of that?" demanded Elsie; "did she tell you? Have you——"
She stopped short, the words frozen on her lips by the look which Grantley Mellen still fixed upon his wife. Without changing that steady gaze, he extended his hand towards Elsie.
"Give me the bracelet!" he said, in the cold, hard tone which, with him, was the sure forerunner of a tempest of passion.