"
"Then why this coldness? What have I done to merit your dislike?"
"You loved Algernon. You love him still. Aye, that blush! Your face
tells no falsehood. You cannot conceal it from me."
"I do not deny my love. But he is dead. Why should you be jealous of the
dead?"
Mark smiled a grim bitter smile. "But if he were alive?"
"Ah!" and she pressed her small white hand tightly on her heart. "But
then, Marcus, I should not be your wife. It would no longer be my duty
to love another."
"You think it, then, your duty to love me?"
"Yes. You are my husband. My heart is lonely and sad. It must be filled
by some object. Dear Marcus, suffer me to love you."
She laid her fair cheek meekly upon his knee, but he did not answer her
touching appeal to his sympathy with a single caress.
"I cannot make you happy, Elinor. Algernon alone can do that."
"Algernon! Why Algernon?" said Elinor, bursting into tears. "Is it to
make me more miserable that you constantly remind me of my loss?"
"How do you know that he is dead?"
"I have your word for it; the evidence of your friend's letter; his long
silence. What frightful images you conjure up! You seem determined to
make me wretched to-night."
She sprang from her lowly seat, and left the room in an agony of tears.
Mark looked after her for a moment:--"Aye, he still keeps your heart.
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