“Oh, if my baby did not die, they were cruel and wicked to deceive me, to cheat me out of its love all these years! But only let me find out if that child is mine, and I will have it—I will!” she sobbed wildly, in a mood of passionate recklessness.
But suddenly she heard her husband’s voice in the hall, and shivered.
“Oh, what am I talking of? How dare I claim my child in the face of everything that is against me?” she moaned bitterly; and just then Colonel Falconer entered, with a face full of anxiety.
“They told me you had a headache. Can I do anything for you, my darling?” he asked tenderly.
“Only love me and pity me,” the girl answered, almost despairingly, out of her hidden sorrow.
He was alarmed at her tone, and feared she was suffering greatly.
“Let me send for a physician,” he urged.
“No, no, I do not need medicine—only rest and quiet,” she pleaded, with a feeling of remorse in her heart that she could not love him better—he was so good and true.
But since she had come back to Richmond, she was conscious that there was less chance than ever for her to love her husband in the ardent fashion to which he had the best claim. Her affection for him was so calm, so friendly, only, while, to her dismay, all her old madness had returned at the first sight of Norman Wylde’s handsome face.
“Oh what a tyrant love is!” she sighed bitterly. “I thought I hated him—I know I ought to hate him—yet his face haunts me as it did in those old days when I loved him first. I dream of him by night, and I think of him by day, in spite of every endeavor to forget him. Heaven help me, for I am wretched!”