Looking up, he saw her--she was at the other end of the gallery; he saw
the tall, slender figure and the sweeping dress--he saw the white arms
with their graceful contour, the golden hair, the radiant face--and he
groaned aloud; he saw her looking up at the pictures as she passed
slowly along--the ancestral Arleighs of whom he was so proud. If they
could have spoken, those noble women, what would they have said to this
daughter of a felon?

She paused for a few minutes to look up at her favorite, Lady Alicia,
and then she came up to him and stood before him in an the grace of her
delicate loveliness, in all the pride of her dainty beauty. She was
looking at the gorgeous Titian near him.

"Norman," she said, "the sun has turned those rubies into drops of
blood--- they looked almost terrible on the white throat. What a strange
picture! What a tragical face!"

Suddenly with outstretched arms she fell on her knees at his side.

"Oh, my darling, what has happened? What is the matter?"

She had been away from him only half an hour, yet it seemed to him ages
since he had watched her leave the gallery with a smile on her lips.

"What is it, my darling?" she cried again. "Dear Norman, you look as
though the shadow of death had passed over you. What is it?"

In another moment she had flung herself on his breast, clasped her arms
round his neck, and was kissing his pale changed face as she had never
done before.

"Norman, my darling husband, you are ill," she said--"ill, and you will
not tell me. That is why you sent me away."

He tried to unclasp her arms, but she clung the more closely to him.

"You shall not send me away. You wish to suffer in silence? Oh, my
darling, my husband, do you forget that I am your wife, for better, for
worse, in sickness and in health? You shall not suffer without my
knowledge."

"I am not ill, Madaline," he said, with a low moan. "It is not that."

"Then something has happened--you have been frightened."

He unclasped her arms from his neck--their caress was a torture to him.

"My poor darling, my poor wife, it is far worse than that. No man has
ever seen a more ghastly specter than I have seen of death in life."

She looked round in quick alarm.

"A specter!" she cried fearfully; and then something strange in his face
attracted her attention. She looked at him. "Norman," she said, slowly,
"is it--is it something about me?"

How was he to tell her? He felt that it would be easie