ity replaced
the cheerful serenity his face once wore. Wherein the alteration lay
Sylvia could not tell, but over the whole man some subtle change had
passed. The sudden frost which had blighted the tenderest affection of
his life seemed to have left its chill behind, robbing his manner of its
cordial charm, his voice of its heartsome ring, and giving him the look
of one who sternly said--"I must suffer, but it shall be alone."

Cold and quiet, he stood regarding her with a strange expression, as if
endeavoring to realize the truth, and see in her not his wife but
Warwick's lover. Oppressed by the old fear, now augmented by a
measureless regret, she could only look up at him feeling that her
husband had become her judge. Yet as she looked she was conscious of a
momentary wonder at the seeming transposition of character in the two so
near and dear to her. Strong-hearted Warwick wept like any child, but
accepted his disappointment without complaint and bore it manfully.
Moor, from whom she would sooner have expected such demonstration, grew
stormy first, then stern, as she once believed his friend would have
done. She forgot that Moor's pain was the sharper, his wound the deeper,
for the patient hope cherished so long; the knowledge that he never had
been, never could be loved as he loved; the sense of wrong that could
not but burn even in the meekest heart at such a late discovery, such an
entire loss.

Sylvia spoke first, not audibly, but with a little gesture of
supplication, a glance of sorrowful submission. He answered both, not by
lamentation or reproach, but by just enough of his accustomed tenderness
in touch and tone to make her tears break forth, as he placed her in the
ancient chair so often occupied together, took the one opposite, and
sweeping a clear space on the table between them, looked across it with
the air of a man bent on seeing his way and following it at any cost.

"Now Sylvia, I can listen as I should."

"Oh, Geoffrey, what can I say?"

"Repeat all you have already told me. I only gathered one fact then, now
I want the circumstances, for I find this confession difficult of
belief."

Perhaps no sterner expiation could have been required of her than to sit
there, face to face, eye to eye, and tell again that little history of
thwarted love and fruitless endeavor. Excitement had given her courage
for the first confession, now it was torture to carefully repeat what
had poured freely from her li