The Baronets Bride | Page 9

arms. Quivering and convulsed, she writhed in an epileptic fit.
"She will kill herself yet," Pietro said. "Hand me the drops, Zara."
Zara poured something out of a bottle into a cup, and Pietro held it to the sick woman's livid lips.
She choked and swallowed, and, as if by magic, lay still in his arms. Very tenderly he laid her back on the bed.
"She will sleep now, Zara," he said. "Let us go."
They descended the stairs. Down below, the man laid his hands on his wife's shoulders and looked into her face.
"Watch her, Zara," he said, "for she is mad, and the very first opportunity she will make her escape and seek out Sir Jasper Kingsland; and that is the very last thing I want. So watch your mother well."



CHAPTER IV.
AN UNINVITED GUEST.
Sir Jasper Kingsland stood moodily alone. He was in the library, standing by the window--that very window through which, one stormy night scarcely a month before, he had admitted Achmet the Astrologer. He stood there with a face of such dark gloom that all the brightness of the sunlit April day could not cast one enlivening gleam.
He stood there scowling darkly upon it all, so lost in his own somber thoughts that he did not hear the library door open, nor the soft rustle of a woman's dress as she halted on the threshold.
A fair and stately lady, with a proud, colorless face lighted up with pale-blue eyes, and with bands of pale flaxen hair pushed away under a dainty lace cap--a lady who looked scarce thirty, although almost ten years older, unmistakably handsome, unmistakably proud. It was Olivia, Lady Kingsland.
"Alone, Sir Jasper!" a musical voice said. "May I come in, or do you prefer solitude and your own thoughts?"
The sweet voice--soft and low, as a lady's voice should be--broke the somber spell that bound him. He wheeled round, his dark, moody face lighting up at sight of her, as all the glorious morning sunshine never could have lighted it. That one radiant look would have told you how he loved his wife.
"You, Olivia?" he cried, advancing. "Surely this is a surprise! My dearest, is it quite prudent in you to leave your room?"
He took the slender, white-robed figure in his arms, and kissed her as tenderly as a bridegroom of a week might have done. Lady Kingsland laughed a soft, tinkling little laugh.
"A month is quite long enough to be a prisoner, Jasper, even although a prisoner of state. And on my boy's christening fete--the son and heir I have desired so long--ah, surely a weaker mother than I might essay to quit her room."
The moody darkness, like a palpable frown, swept over the baronet's face again at her words.
"Is he dressed?" he asked.
"He is dressed and asleep, and Lady Helen and Mr. Carlyon, his godmother and godfather, are hovering over the crib like twin guardian angels. And Mildred sits en grande tenue on her cricket, in a speechless trance of delight, and nurse rustles about in her new silk gown and white lace cap with an air of importance and self-complacency almost indescribable. The domestic picture only wants papa and mamma to make it complete."
She laughed as she spoke, a little sarcastically; but Sir Jasper's attempt even to smile was a ghastly failure.
Lady Kingsland folded both her hands on his shoulder, and looked up in his face with anxious, searching eyes.
"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?"
The tender reproach of her tone, of her eyes, stung the husband, who loved her, to the quick.
"For God's sake, Olivia, don't ask me!" he cried passionately. "It would be sheerest nonsense in your eyes, I know. You would but laugh at what half drives me mad!"
Jasper!"
"Don't look at me with that reproachful face, Olivia! It is true. You would look upon it as sheerest folly, I tell you, and laugh at me for a credulous fool."
"No," said Lady Kingsland, quietly, and a little coldly. "You know me better. I could never laugh at what gives my husband pain."
"Pain! I have lived in torment ever since, and yet--who knows?--it may be absurdest jugglery. But he told me the past so truly--my very thoughts! And no one could know what