e, almost of
haughtiness. All else seemed forgotten; she had turned away from the
child's little bed, as if it had no existence. It flashed upon me that
something of the poison of her artificial atmosphere was reaching her
already.

Kenmure's step was heard in the hall, and, with fire in her eyes, she
hastened to meet him. I seemed actually to breathe freer after the
departure of that enchanting woman, in danger of perishing inwardly, I
said to myself, in an air too lavishly perfumed. Bending over Marian, I
wondered if it were indeed possible that a perfectly healthy life had
sprung from that union too intense and too absorbed. Yet I had often
noticed that the child seemed to wear the temperaments of both her
parents as a kind of playful disguise, and to peep at you, now out of
the one, now from the other, showing that she had her own individual
life behind.

As if by some infantine instinct, the darling turned in her sleep, and
came unconsciously nearer me. With a half-feeling of self-reproach, I
drew around my neck, inch by inch, the little arms that tightened with a
delicious thrill; and so I half reclined there till I myself dozed, and
the watchful Janet, looking in, warned me away. Crossing the entry to my
own chamber, I heard Kenmure and Laura down stairs, but I knew that I
should be superfluous, and felt that I was sleepy.

I had now, indeed, become always superfluous when they were together,
though never when they were apart. Even they must be separated
sometimes, and then each sought me, in order to discourse about the
other. Kenmure showed me every sketch he had ever made of Laura. There
she was, in all the wonderful range of her beauty,--in clay, in cameo,
in pencil, in water-color, in oils. He showed me also his poems, and, at
last, a longer one, for which pencil and graver had alike been laid
aside. All these he kept in a great cabinet she had brought with her to
their housekeeping; and it seemed to me that he also treasured every
flower she had dropped, every slender glove she had worn, every ribbon
from her hair. I could not wonder. Who would not thrill at the touch of
some such memorial of Mary of Scotland, or of Heloise? and what was all
the regal beauty of the past to him? Every room always seemed adorned
when she was in it, empty when she had gone,--save that the trace of her
still seemed left on everything, and all appeared but as a garment she
had worn. It seemed that even her great mirror must r