re so strange, and I do not think
they are often true reflections of our lives. Have you any further
reason for saying I am growing tired of you? It is a vexed question, and
we may as well settle it now as renew the argument."

"No, I have no other reason. Lance, you are not cross with me, dear?"

"No, I am not cross; but, at the same time, I must say frankly I do not
like the idea of a jealous wife; it is very distasteful to me."

Lady Marion raised her eyes in wonder.

"Jealous, Lance?" she repeated. "I am not jealous. Of whom could I be
jealous? I never see you pay the least attention to any one."

"Jealous wives, as a rule, begin by accusing their husbands of cooling
love, want of attention, and all that kind of thing."

"But, Lance," continued the beautiful woman, "are you quite sure that
there is no truth in what I say?"

He looked at her with a dreamy gaze in his dark eyes.

"I am quite sure," he replied. "I love you, Marion, as much as ever I
did, and I have not noticed in the least that I have failed in any
attention toward you; if I have I will amend my ways."

He kissed the fair face bent so lovingly over him; and his wife laid her
fair arms round his neck.

"I should not like to be jealous," she said; "but I must have your whole
heart, Lance; I could not be content with a share of it."

"Who could share it with you?" he asked, evasively.

"I do not know, I only know that it must be all or none for me," she
answered. "It is all--is it not, Lance?"

He kissed her and would fain have said yes, but it came home to him with
a sharp conviction that his heart had been given to one woman, and one
only--no other could ever possess it.

A few days afterward, when Lord Chandos expressed a wish to go to the
opera again, his wife looked at him in wonder.

"Again?" she said. "Why, Lance, it is only two nights since you were
there, and it is the same opera; you will grow tired of it."

"The only amusement I really care for is the opera," he said. "I am
growing too lazy for balls, but I never tire of music."

He said to himself, that if for the future he wished to go to the opera
he would not mention the fact, but would go without her.

They went out that evening: the opera was "Norma." Lord Chandos heard
nothing and saw nothing but the wondrous face of Norma; every note of
that music went home to his heart--the love, the trust, the reproaches.
When she sang them in her grandly pathetic voice, it was as