The Baronet's Bride Part 5

"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 G.o.d's sake, Olivia, don't ask me!" he cried pa.s.sionately. "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 happened in Spain so many years ago! Oh, I must believe it--I can not help it--and that belief will drive me mad!"

Lady Kingsland stood looking and listening, in pale wonder.

"I don't understand a word of this," she said, slowly. "Will you tell me, Sir Jasper, or am I to understand you have secrets your wife may not share?"

"My own dear wife," he said--"my best beloved--Heaven knows, if I have one secret from you, I keep it that I may save you sorrow. Not one cloud should ever darken the suns.h.i.+ne of your sky, if I had my way.

You are right--I have a secret--a secret of horror, and dread, and dismay--a terrible secret that sears my brain and burns my heart!

Olivia, my darling, its very horror prevents my telling it to you!"

"Does it concern our boy?" she asked, quickly.

"Yes!" with a groan. "Now you can understand its full terror. It menaces the son I love more than life. I thought to keep it from you; I tried to appear unchanged; but it seems I have failed miserably."

"And you will not tell me what this secret is?"

"I dare not! I would not have you suffer as I suffer."

"A moment ago you said I would laugh at it and you. Your terms are inconsistent, Sir Jasper."

"Spare me, Olivia!--I scarce know what I say--and do not be angry."

She drew her hands coldly and haughtily away from his grasp. She was a thoroughly proud woman, and his secrecy stung her.

"I am not angry, Sir Jasper. Keep your secret, if you will. I was foolish enough to fancy I had right to know of any danger that menaces my baby, but it appears I was mistaken. In half an hour the carriages will start for the church. You will find us all in the nursery."

She was sweeping proudly away in silent anger, but the baronet strode after her and caught her arm.

"You will know this!" he said, huskily. "Olivia, Olivia! you are cruel to yourself and to me, but you shall hear--part, at least. I warn you, however, you will be no happier for knowing."

"Go on," she said, steadily.

He turned from her, walked to the window, and kept his back to her while he spoke.

"You have no faith in fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, astrologers, and the like, have you, Olivia?"

"Most certainly not!"

"Then what I have to say will scarcely trouble you as it troubles me--for I believe; and the prediction of an astrologer has ruined my peace for the past month."

"Is that all? The mountain in labor has brought forth a mouse. My dear Sir Jasper, how can you be so simply credulous?"

"I knew you would laugh," said Sir Jasper, moodily; "I said so. But laugh if you can. I believe!"

"Was the prediction very terrible, then?" asked his wife, with a smile.

"Pray tell me all about it."

"It was terrible," her husband replied, sternly. "The living horror it has cast over me might have told you that. Listen, Olivia! On that night of our baby boy's birth, after I left you and came here, I stood by this window and saw a spectral face gleaming through the gla.s.s. It was the face of a man--a belated wayfarer--who adjured me, in the Savior's name, to let him in."

"Well, you let him in, I suppose?"

"I let him in--a strange-looking object, Olivia, like no creature I ever saw before, with flowing beard and hair silver-white--"

"False, no doubt."

"He wore a long, disguising cloak and a skull-cap," went on Sir Jasper, "and his face was blanched to a dull dead white. He would have looked like a resuscitated corpse, only for a pair of burning black eyes."

"Quite a startling apparition! Melodramatic in the extreme! And this singular being--what was he? Clairvoyant, astrologer, what?"

"Astrologer--an Eastern astrologer--Achmet by name."

"And who, probably, never was further than London in his life-time. A well-got-up charlatan, no doubt."

"Charlatan he may have been; Englishman he was not. His face, his speech, convinced me of that. And, Olivia, charlatan or no, he told me my past life as truly as I knew it myself."

Lady Kingsland listened with a quiet smile.

"No doubt he has been talking to the good people of the village and to the servants in the house."

"Neither the people of the village nor the servants of the house know aught of what he told me. He showed me what transpired twenty years ago.

"Twenty years ago?"

"Yes, when I was fresh from Cambridge, and making my first tour.

Events that occurred in Spain--that no one under heaven save myself can know of--he told me."

"That was strange!"