"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?"