"O, harping on that string again," said Ivar impatiently. "It's out of the question—at present. The governor would never forgive me for marrying a woman of no family, especially," he added, with something like a sneer, "especially a woman who admits that there is a shadow on her name."
There was a flash of resentment in the eyes that were turned suddenly upon him.
"You can bear me witness it was before our marriage and not after that I confessed to having a secret."
"You would not tell me its nature."
"No: nor ever shall," replied Lorelie, with a hardening of her features. "You were willing to take me as I was, and to ask no questions as to my past. You promised never to refer to my secret. But—how often have you reproached me with it?"
Ivar smoked on in moody silence. It was true he had given no thought to her secret in his first glow of passion. A slave to sensuality he had married Lorelie for her beauty, not knowing who or whence she was, ignorant even that her true name was Rochefort. Now that her beauty was beginning to pall upon him, a fact he took little pains to disguise, this secret that darkened her past began to trouble him. What answer was he to give to the editors of "Debrett" and "Burke," when interrogated as to his wife's family?
"Ivar," Lorelie continued earnestly, "your visits here are beginning to be noticed. My character is becoming exposed to suspicions. You will let the world know that I am your wife, will you not?"
No true man could have resisted the appealing glance of her eyes, the pleading tone of her soft voice; but Ivar, being no true man, was proof against both.
"Impossible, at present," he frowned. "I have raised you from comparative poverty to affluence; I have surrounded you with luxury, and, by heaven! you little know at what cost, and at what risk to myself! I have made you my wife: be content with that. You will be a countess some day; think of your future triumph over those who slight you now. If people talk, you must put up with it, or go away from Ormsby. It was against my wish that you came here. But your vanity is such that you must feast your eyes daily upon your future heritage of Ravenhall."
"It was neither the desire to see the Ravengar lands, nor the wish even to be near you, that drew me to Ormsby, but a very different motive."