Elizabeth Mellen shuddered in every limb at that repulsive sound; an absolute spasm of pain contracted her features, she gave no other sign of emotion, but clenched her hands hard together, forcing herself to be calm. "I only received your letter this morning," he continued, watching her every movement carefully, while standing there with his back against a tree with apparent unconcern; "I should have been earlier, had it been possible." She made an impatient gesture. "No more of that," she exclaimed, "enough!" He looked at her with the same careless smile that lighted up his somewhat worn face into an expression of absolute youthfulness. He was still a splendidly handsome man; a type of rare beauty which could not have failed to attract general observation wherever he appeared. He was tall; the shoulders and limbs might have served as a model for a sculptor; the neck was white almost as a woman's; the magnificent head set with perfect grace upon it, and was carried with a haughty air that was absolutely noble. He might have been thirty-eight, perhaps even older than that, but he was one of those men concerning whose age even a physiognomist would be puzzled to decide. The face was almost faultless in its contour; the mouth, shaded by a long silken moustache, which relieved his paleness admirably, and lent new splendor to his eyes, which possessed a strange magnetic power that had worked ill in more than one unfortunate destiny. It was a face trained to concealment, and yet so carefully tutored that at the first glance one only thought what an open, pleasant expression it had. Even after long intercourse and a thorough knowledge of the man's character, that face would have puzzled the most skillful observer. Elizabeth Mellen was looking at him in a strange silence; whatever might have been in the past there was no spell now in those glorious eyes which could dazzle her soul into forgetfulness; shade after shade of repressed emotion passed over her features as she gazed, leaving them at last white and fixed as marble. "You are pale," he said, "so changed." She started as if he had struck her. "I did not come here to talk of my appearance," she said. "True," he replied, "very true; but I cannot help wondering. I think of that day when I saved your life----" "If you had only let me die then!" she broke in passionately. "If God had only mercifully deprived you of all strength!" "You were blooming and gay," he went on as if he had not heard her words. "Yes, you are changed since then." "I will not hear these things," she cried; "I will not be made to look back upon what we all were then." She closed her eyes in blind anguish; his words brought back with such terrible force the time of that meeting--the day but one before her marriage, when he had started up so fatally in her path, and never left it till this terrible moment.