why do you ask?"

"And his heart?" I said, half frightened at my own temerity.

"Heart?" she answered. "He loves me."

Her color mounted higher yet; she had a look of pride, 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 found myself actually breathing more freely
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, through all the range of her beauty,--there she was 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, seeing his
passion as it was. Who would not thrill at the touch of some such
slight memorial of Mary of Scotland, or of Heloise? and what was all
the regal beauty of the past to hi