“I thought you had got over that--since you married,” she said, with some uneasiness. Somehow the thought of his fondness for Sweetheart was not pleasant to his mother. There hung over her always the dread of Camille’s jealous anger. She said to herself: “Foolish boy! He does not understand his wife, else he would not display such fondness for the child she hates.” But she dared not breathe her thoughts aloud, lest he should reproach her for her share in his marriage. Her cue was silence. He did not answer her half-questioning words save by a long, deep sigh, and presently he went away from the darkened room and the suffering child back to his beautiful wife, who was so deep in a flirtation with a new-comer at the hotel that she barely nodded to Norman, and did not think it worth her while to ask after the welfare of the sick child. The only news she would have cared to hear would have been that Sweetheart was dead. The proud, passionate, undisciplined nature was bent now on punishing Norman for every jealous pang she had suffered over innocent Little Sweetheart. To wound him with her indifference, to torture him by the smiles she gave to others, in this she found a bitter balm for the indignity she felt she had suffered at his hands when he had taken Sweetheart’s part against her--his wife. He sat apart with sad eyes and watched the beautiful, vivid creature as she coquetted with the flattered Englishman whose admiration was plainly written on his face, and wondered if it could be true that she really loved him, her boy-husband, or had she wearied of him long ago? Did she chafe at the fetters that bound their two lives in one? “I believe that in her heart she despises me; that she believes me a miserable fortune-hunter, who loves her gold more than her charms,” he said to himself, miserably, with a pang of shame so great that it seemed to him he could almost have died to assure her of his innocence of all mercenary designs upon her fortune. She stole furtive glances at him, and she knew by his pale, stern face that he was suffering intensely. Her beautiful lips curled into a smile of triumph. Had she not vowed to pay him back? “Let him suffer,” she said to herself, with cruel firmness; but by and by, when a beautiful young girl sat down near Norman and began to talk to him, she grew restless and ill at ease. She did not want him to be consoled, so she soon found a pretext for dismissing her companion and joining her husband and the fair girl who seemed to find such pleasure in his company. The young girl--an heiress from New York--smiled mischievously as Mrs. de Vere came near. Her jealousy of her young husband was an open secret. “Mrs. de Vere, I was just telling your husband that we are going to have a real live lord here to-night,” she said, vivaciously. “Indeed, Miss Spaulding? Why, how delightful! What is his name?” exclaimed the lady, pretending great interest in the subject.