And she was looking very lovely to-night. Her entire absence of color, while it robbed her of one charm, bestowed another. That glowing yet perfect pallor of impassioned melancholy—that dark brilliance of eyes that could, but would not weep—made her beauty more luring than before; for a sorrowful face always appeals most directly to the heart.
She wore a dress he had always admired—a dinner-dress of pale, creamy-hued silk, shading, as the lustrous folds fell together, into pale wild-rose tints. A fragrant, half-blown tea-rose blossomed against her whiter throat, among frills of snowy lace, and a slender cross of pearls and diamonds depended from a slight golden chain that swung almost to her slim, girlish waist; a bandeau of rare pearls clasped on her brow with a diamond star held her golden hair in place, and gave the last touch that was wanting to make her fairly royal in her loveliness.
This was his wife! In all his jealous love and hatred, that name thrilled his soul like a pæan of triumph. All that beauty was his, his own; but—the undying thought thrilled him like a sword thrust—it might have been another's, had that other asked it first.
That other! he had seen her clinging to his arm that day, her magical eyes uplifted to his in deep emotion. In the anger that rose at the remembrance, he forgot the passionate pride and love that had shown on him from the gallery that morning—forgot everything but that later scene; and as it rushed vividly back to his mind, he put his hand to his face and groaned aloud.
And still she stood mute, moveless, with that hunted look deepening on her face, as no word or sign betrayed his answer.
"You will not even answer me!" she moaned, at last.
"It needs not his love to plead your cause, Grace," he answered, in heart-wrung accents. "While I thought that your only fault was in deceiving me before our marriage, my own love pleaded unceasingly for you, my every effort was directed to the destruction of my fiery jealousy and anger toward you. I was succeeding. God knows this is true. The message I sent you by Captain Clendenon was the outgrowth of that milder mood. In all probability I should soon have returned to you—glad to call you mine, even though I knew you to have once loved another. Once! My God! how little I knew of the dark reality! how little I dreamed of your deception until I saw you here to-day—with him!"
"Oh! not with him!" she cried, in indignant denial—"oh! not with him! I had met him but that moment, and by the merest accident. Paul, was I to blame for that?"
"Mamma, pretty mamma!" lisped the baby, reaching his arms to her in vague alarm at the papa who was grieving her so, and, with cold deference, he laid him in his mother's arms, as he answered:
"Not to blame for meeting him accidentally, of course, Grace; but you were to blame for stopping him, for clinging to him, for looking into his eyes as you did, knowing what you did of the feelings existing between himself and me—deeply to blame."