← catalogue

The Reason Why

by Elinor Glyn · English · Gutenberg #12450 · 592,868 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Reason Why
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Reason Why

Author: Elinor Glyn


        
Release date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #12450]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12450

Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Shawn Cruze and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REASON WHY ***

[Illustration: "Not by a glance or a turn of the head did he let his
bride see how wildly her superlative attraction had kindled the fire in
his blood."]



THE REASON WHY


BY ELINOR GLYN

1911

Author of "His Hour," "Three Weeks," etc.


ILLUSTRATED BY EDMUND FREDERICK





LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


"Not by a glance or a turn of his head did he let his bride see how
wildly her superlative attraction had kindled the fire in his blood"

"The whole expression of her face changed as he came and leaned upon the
piano"

"With his English self-control and horror of a scene, he followed his
wife to the door"

"'Zara!' he said distractedly ...'Can I not help you?'"





THE REASON WHY



CHAPTER I


People often wondered what nation the great financier, Francis Markrute,
originally sprang from. He was now a naturalized Englishman and he
looked English enough. He was slight and fair, and had an immaculately
groomed appearance generally--which even the best of valets cannot
always produce. He wore his clothes with that quiet, unconscious air
which is particularly English. He had no perceptible accent--only a
deliberate way of speaking. But Markrute!--such a name might have come
from anywhere. No one knew anything about him, except that he was
fabulously rich and had descended upon London some ten years previously
from Paris, or Berlin, or Vienna, and had immediately become a power in
the city, and within a year or so, had grown to be omnipotent in certain
circles.

He had a wonderfully appointed house in Park Lane, one of those smaller
ones just at the turn out of Grosvenor Street, and there he entertained
in a reserved fashion.

It had been remarked by people who had time to think--rare cases in
these days--that he had never made a disadvantageous friend, from his
very first arrival. If he had to use undesirables for business purposes
he used them only for that, in a crisp, hard way, and never went to
their houses. Every acquaintance even was selected with care for a
definite end. One of his favorite phrases was that "it is only the fool
who coins for himself limitations."

At this time, as he sat smoking a fine cigar in his library which looked
out on the park, he was perhaps forty-six years old or thereabouts, and
but for his eyes--wise as serpents'--he might have been ten years
younger.

Opposite to him facing the light a young man lounged in a great leather
chair. The visitors in Francis Markrute's library nearly always faced
the light, while he himself had his back to it.

There was no doubt about this visitor's nation! He was flamboyantly
English. If you had wished to send a prize specimen of the race to a
World's Fair you could not have selected anything finer. He was perhaps
more Norman than Saxon, for his hair was dark though his eyes were blue,
and the marks of breeding in the creature showed as plainly as in a
Derby winner. Francis Markrute always smoked his cigars to the end, if
he were at leisure and the weed happened to be a good one, but Lord
Tancred (Tristram Lorrimer Guiscard Guiscard, 24th Baron Tancred, of
Wrayth in the County of Suffolk) flung his into the grate after a few
whiffs, and he laughed with a slightly whimsical bitterness as he went
on with the conversation.

"Yes, Francis, my friend, the game here is played out; I am thirty, and
there is nothing interesting left for me to do but emigrate to Canada,
for a while at least, and take up a ranch."

"Wrayth mortgaged heavily, I suppose?" said Mr. Markrute, quietly.

"Pretty well, and the Northern property, too. When my mother's jointure
is paid there is not a great deal left this year, it seems. I don't mind
much; I had a pretty fair time before these beastly Radicals made things
so difficult."

The financier nodded, and the young man went on: "My forbears got rid of
what they could; there was not much ready money to come into and one had
to live!"

Francis Markrute smoked for a minute thoughtfully.

"Naturally," he said at last. "Only the question is--for how long? I
understand a plunge, if you settle its duration; it is the drifting and
trusting to chance, and a gradual sinking which seem to me a poor game.
Did you ever read de Musset's 'Rolla'?"

"The fellow who had arrived at his last night, and to whom the little
girl was so kind? Yes: well?"

"You reminded me of Jacques Rolla, that is all."

"Oh, come! It is not as bad as that!" Lord Tancred exclaimed--and he
laughed. "I can collect a few thousands still, even here, and I can go
to Canada. I believe there is any quantity of money to be made there
with a little capital, and it is a nice, open-air life. I just looked in
this afternoon on my way back from Scotland to tell you I should be
going out to prospect, about the end of November and could not join you
for the pheasants on the 20th, as you were good enough to ask me to do."

The financier half closed his eyes. When he did this there was always
something of importance working in his brain.

"You have not any glaring vices, Tancred," he said. "You are no gambler
either on the turf or at cards. You are not over addicted to expensive
ladies. You are cultivated, for a sportsman, and you have made one or
two decent speeches in the House of Lords. You are, in fact, rather a
fine specimen of your class. It seems a pity you should have to shut
down and go to the Colonies."

"Oh, I don't know! And I have not altogether got to shut down," the
young man said, "only the show is growing rather rotten over here. We
have let the rabble--the most unfit and ignorant--have the casting vote,
and the machine now will crush any man. I have kept out of politics as
much as I can and I am glad."

Francis Markrute got up and lowered the blind a few inches--a miserable
September sun was trying to shine into the room. If Lord Tancred had not
been so preoccupied with his own thoughts he would have remarked this
restlessness on the part of his host. He was no fool; but his mind was
far away. It almost startled him when the cold, deliberate voice
continued:

"I have a proposition to make to you should you care to accept it. I
have a niece--a widow--she is rather an attractive lady. If you will
marry her I will pay off all your mortgages and settle on her quite a
princely dower."

"Good God!" said Lord Tancred.

The financier reddened a little about the temples, and his eyes for an
instant gave forth a flash of steel. There had been an infinite variety
of meanings hidden in the exclamation, but he demanded suavely:

"What point of the question causes you to exclaim 'Good God'?"

The sang-froid of Lord Tancred never deserted him.

"The whole thing," he said--"to marry at all, to begin with, and to
marry an unknown woman, to have one's debts paid, for the rest! It is a
tall order."

"A most common occurrence. Think of the number of your peers who have
gone to America for their wives, for no other reason."

"And think of the rotters they are--most of them! I mayn't be much
catch, financially; but I have one of the oldest names and titles in
England--and up to now we have not had any cads nor cowards in the
family, and I think a man who marries a woman for money is both. By
Jove! Francis, what are you driving at? Confound it, man! I am not
starving and can work, if it should ever come to that."

Mr. Markrute smoothed his hands. He was a peculiarly still person
generally.

"Yes, it was a blunder, I admit, to put it this way. So I will be frank
with you. My family is also, my friend, as old as yours. My niece is all
I have left in the world. I would like to see her married to an
Englishman. I would like to see her married to you of all Englishmen
because I like you and you have qualities about you which count in life.
Oh, believe me!"--and he raised a protesting finger to quell an
interruption--"I have studied you these years; there is nothing you can
say of yourself or your affairs that I do not know."

Lord Tancred laughed.

"My dear old boy," he said, "we have been friends for a long time; and,
now we are coming to hometruths, I must say I like your deuced
cold-blooded point of view on every subject. I like your knowledge of
wines and cigars and pictures, and you are a most entertaining
companion. But, 'pon my soul I would not like to have your niece for a
wife if she took after you!"

"You think she would be cold-blooded, too?"

"Undoubtedly; but it is all perfectly preposterous. I don't believe you
mean a word you are saying--it is some kind of a joke."

"Have you ever known me to make such jokes, Tancred?" Mr. Markrute asked
calmly.

"No, I haven't, and that is the odd part of it. What the devil do you
mean, really, Francis?"

"I mean what I say: I will pay every debt you have, and give you a
charming wife with a fortune."

Lord Tancred got up and walked about the room. He was a perfectly
natural creature, stolid and calm as those of his race, disciplined and
deliberate in moments of danger or difficulty; yet he never lived under
self-conscious control as the financier did. He was rather moved now,
and so he walked about. He was with a friend, and it was not the moment
to have to bother over disguising his feelings.

"Oh, it is nonsense, Francis; I could not do it. I have knocked about
the world as you know, and, since you are aware of everything about me,
you say, you have probably heard some of my likings--and dislikings. I
never go after a woman unless she attracts me, and I would never marry
one of them unless I were madly in love with her, whether she had money
or no; though I believe I would hate a wife with money, in any
case--she'd be saying like the American lady of poor Darrowood: 'It's my
motor and you can't have it to-day.'"

"You would marry a woman then--if you were in love, in spite of
everything?" Francis Markrute asked.

"Probably, but I have never been really in love; have you? It is all
story-book stuff--that almighty passion, I expect. They none of them
matter very much after a while, do they, old boy?"

"I have understood it is possible for a woman to matter," the financier
said and he drew in his lips.

"Well, up to now I have not," Lord Tancred announced, "and may the day
be far off when one does. I feel pretty safe!"

A strange, mysterious smile crept over Mr. Markrute's face.

"By the way, also, how do you know the lady would be willing to marry
me, Francis? You spoke as if I only had to be consulted in the affair."

"So you have. I can answer for my niece; she will do as I wish, and, as
I said before, you are rather a perfect picture of an English nobleman,
Tancred. You have not found women recalcitrant, as a rule--no?"

Lord Tancred was not inordinately vain, though a man, and he had a sense
of humor--so he laughed.

"'Pon my word it is amusing, your turning into a sort of matrimonial
agent. Can't you see the fun of the thing yourself?"

"It seems quite natural to me. You have every social advantage to offer
a woman, and a presentable person; and my niece has youth, and some
looks, and a large fortune. But we will say no more about it. I shall be
glad to be of any service I can to you, anyway, in regard to your
Canadian scheme. Come and dine to-night; I happen to have asked a couple
of railway magnates with interests out there, and you can get some
information from them."

And so it was arranged, and Lord Tancred got up to go; but just at the
door he paused and said with a laugh:

"And shall I see the niece?"

The financier had his back turned, and so he permitted the flicker of a
smile to come over his mouth as he answered:

"It might be; but we have dismissed the subject of the niece."

And so they parted.

At the sound of the closing of the door Mr. Markrute pressed the button
of a wonderful trifle of Russian enamel and emeralds, which lay on his
writing table, and a quiet servant entered the room.

"Tell the Countess Shulski I wish to speak to her here immediately,
please," he said. "Ask her to descend at once."

But he had to walk up and down several times, and was growing impatient,
before the door opened and a woman came slowly into the room.



CHAPTER II


The financier paused in his restless pacing as he heard the door open
and stood perfectly still, with his back to the light. The woman
advanced and also stood still, and they looked at one another with no
great love in their eyes, though she who had entered was well worth
looking at, from a number of points of view. Firstly, she had that
arresting, compelling personality which does not depend upon features,
or coloring, or form, or beauty. A subtle force of character--a
radiating magnetism--breathed from her whole being. When Zara Shulski
came into any assemblage of people conversation stopped and speculation
began.

She was rather tall and very slender; and yet every voluptuous curve of
her lithe body refuted the idea of thinness. Her head was small and her
face small, and short, and oval, with no wonderfully chiseled features,
only the skin was quite exceptional in its white purity--not the purity
of milk, but the purity of rich, white velvet, or a gardenia petal. Her
mouth was particularly curved and red and her teeth were very even, and
when she smiled, which was rarely, they suggested something of great
strength, though they were small and white. And now I am coming to her
two wonders, her eyes and her hair. At first you could have sworn the
eyes were black; just great pools of ink, or disks of black velvet, set
in their broad lids and shaded with jet lashes, but if they chanced to
glance up in the full light then you knew they were slate color, not a
tinge of brown or green--the whole iris was a uniform shade: strange,
slumberous, resentful eyes, under straight, thick, black brows, the
expression full of all sorts of meanings, though none of them peaceful
or calm. And from some far back Spanish-Jewess ancestress she probably
got that glorious head of red hair, the color of a ripe chestnut when it
falls from its shell, or a beautifully groomed bright bay horse. The
heavy plaits which were wound tightly round her head must have fallen
below her knees when they were undone. Her coiffure gave you the
impression that she never thought of fashion, nor changed its form of
dressing, from year to year. And the exquisite planting of the hair on
her forehead, as it waved back in broad waves, added to the perfection
of the Greek simplicity of the whole thing. Nothing about her had been
aided by conscious art. Her dress, of some black clinging stuff, was
rather poor, though she wore it with the air of a traditional empress.
Indeed, she looked an empress, from the tips of her perfect fingers to
her small arched feet.

And it was with imperial hauteur that she asked in a low, cultivated
voice with no accent:

"Well, what is it? Why have you sent for me thus peremptorily?"

The financier surveyed her for a moment; he seemed to be taking in all
her points with a fresh eye. It was almost as though he were counting
them over to himself--and his thoughts ran: "You astonishingly
attractive devil. You have all the pride of my father, the Emperor. How
he would have gloried in you! You are enough to drive any man mad: you
shall be a pawn in my game for the winning of my lady and gain
happiness for yourself, so in the end, Elinka, if she is able to see
from where she has gone, will not say I have been cruel to you."

"I asked you to come down--to discuss a matter of great importance: Will
you be good enough to be seated, my niece," he said aloud with
ceremonious politeness as he drew forward a chair--into which she sank
without more ado and there waited, with folded hands, for him to
continue. Her stillness was always as intense as his own, but whereas
his had a nervous tension of conscious repression, hers had an
unconscious, quiet force. Her father had been an Englishman, but both
uncle and niece at moments made you feel they were silent panthers,
ready to spring.

"So--" was all she said.

And Francis Markrute went on:

"You have a miserable position--hardly enough to eat at times, one
understands. You do not suppose I took the trouble to send for you from
Paris last week, for nothing, do you? You guessed I had some plan in my
head, naturally."

"Naturally," she said, with fine contempt. "I did not mistake it for
philanthropy."

"Then it is well, and we can come to the point," he went on. "I am sorry
I have had to be away, since your arrival, until yesterday. I trust my
servants have made you comfortable?"

"Quite comfortable," she answered coldly.

"Good: now for what I want to know. You have no doubt in your mind that
your husband, Count Ladislaus Shulski, is dead? There is no possible
mistake in his identity? I believe the face was practically shot away,
was it not? I have taken the precaution to inform myself upon every
point, from the authorities at Monte Carlo, but I wish for your final
testimony."

"Ladislaus Shulski is dead," she said quietly, in a tone as though it
gave her pleasure to say it. "The woman Féto caused the fray, Ivan
Larski shot him in her arms; he was her lover who paid, and Ladislaus
the _amant du coeur_ for the moment. She wailed over the body like a
squealing rabbit. She was there lamenting his fine eyes when they sent
for me! They were gone for ever, but no one could mistake his curly
hair, nor his cruel, white hands. Ah! it was a scene of disgust! I have
witnessed many ugly things but that was of the worst. I do not wish to
talk of it; it is passed a year ago. Féto heaped his grave with flowers,
and joined the hero, Larski, who was allowed to escape, so all was
well."

"And since then you have lived from hand to mouth, with those others."
And here Francis Markrute's voice took on a new shade: there was a cold
hate in it.

"I have lived with my little brother, Mirko, and Mimo. How could I
desert them? And sometimes we have found it hard at the end of the
quarter--but it was not always as bad as that, especially when Mimo sold
a picture--"

"I will not hear his name!" Francis Markrute said with some excitement.
"In the beginning, if I could have found him I would have killed him, as
you know, but now the carrion can live, since my sister is dead. He is
not worth powder and shot."

The Countess Shulski gave the faintest shrug of her shoulders, while her
eyes grew blacker with resentment. She did not speak. Francis Markrute
stood by the mantelpiece, and lit a cigar before he continued; he knew
he must choose his words as he was dealing with no helpless thing.

"You are twenty-three years old, Zara, and you were married at
sixteen," he said at last. "And up to thirteen at least I know you were
very highly educated--You understand something of life, I expect."

"Life!" she said--and now there was a concentrated essence of bitterness
in her voice. "_Mon Dieu!_ Life--and men!"

"Yes, you probably think you know men."

She lifted her upper lip a little, and showed her even teeth--it was
like an animal snarling.

"I know that they are either selfish weaklings, or cruel, hateful brutes
like Ladislaus, or clever, successful financiers like you, my uncle.
That is enough! Something we women must be always sacrificed to."

"Well, you don't know Englishmen--"

"Yes, I remember my father very well; cold and hard to my darling
mother"--and here her voice trembled a little--"he only thought of
himself, and to rush to England for sport--and leave her alone for
months and months: selfish and vile--all of them!"

"In spite of that I have found you an English husband whom you will be
good enough to take, madame," Francis Markrute announced
authoritatively.

She gave a little laugh--if anything so mirthless could be called a
laugh.

"You have no power over me; I shall do no such thing."

"I think you will," the financier said with quiet assurance, "if I know
you. There are terms, of course--"

She glanced at him sharply: the expression in those somber eyes was
often alert like a wild animal's, about to be attacked; only she had
trained herself generally to keep the lids lowered.

"What are the terms?" she asked.

And as she spoke Francis Markrute thought of the black panther in the
Zoo, which he was so fond of going to watch on Sunday mornings, she
reminded him so of the beast at the moment.

He had been constrained up to this, but now, the question being one of
business, all his natural ease of manner returned, and he sat down
opposite her and blew rings of smoke from his cigar.

"The terms are that the boy Mirko, your half-brother, shall be provided
for for life. He shall live with decent people, and have his talent
properly cultivated--"

He stopped abruptly and remained silent.

Countess Shulski clasped her hands convulsively in her lap, and with all
the pride and control of her voice there was a note of anguish, too,
which would have touched any heart but one so firmly guarded as Francis
Markrute's.

"Ah, God!" she said so low that he could only just hear her, "I have
paid the price of my body and soul once for them. It is too much to ask
it of me a second time--"

"That is as you please," said the financier.

He seldom made a mistake in his methods with people. He left nothing to
chance; he led up the conversation to the right point, fired his bomb,
and then showed absolute indifference. To display interest in a move,
when one was really interested, was always a point to the adversary. He
maintained interest could be simulated when necessary, but must never be
shown when real. So he left his niece in silence, while she pondered
over his bargain, knowing full well what would be the result. She got up
from her chair and leaned upon the back of it, while her face looked
white as death in the dying afternoon's light.

"Can you realize what my life was like with Ladislaus?" she hissed. "A
plaything for his brutal pleasures, to begin with; a decoy duck to trap
the other men, I found afterwards; tortured and insulted from morning to
night. I hated him always, but he seemed so kind beforehand--kind to my
darling mother, whom you were leaving to die."--Here Francis Markrute
winced and a look of pain came into his hard face while he raised a hand
in protest and then dropped it again, as his niece went on--"And she
was beginning to be ill even at that time and we were so poor--so I
married him."

Then she swept toward the door with her empress air, the rather shabby,
dark dress making a swirl behind her; and as she got there she turned
and spoke again, with her hand on the bronze tracery of the fingerplate,
making, unconsciously, a highly dramatic picture, as a sudden last ray
of the sinking sun shot out and struck the glory of her hair, turning it
to flame above her brow.

"I tell you it is too much," she said, with almost a sob in her voice.
"I will not do it." And then she went out and closed the door.

Francis Markrute, left alone, leant back in his chair and puffed his
cigar calmly while he mused.

What strange things were women! Any man could manage them if only he
reckoned with their temperaments when dealing with them, and paid no
heed to their actual words. Francis Markrute was a philosopher. A number
of the shelves of this, his library, were filled with works on the
subject of philosophy, and a well-thumbed volume of the fragments of
Epicurus lay on a table by his side. He picked it up now and read: "He
who wastes his youth on high feeding, on wine, on women, forgets that he
is like a man who wears out his overcoat in the summer." He had not
wasted his youth either on wine or women, only he had studied both, and
their effects upon the thing which, until lately, had interested him
most in the world--himself. They could both be used to the greatest
advantage and pleasure by a man who apprehended things he knew.

Then he turned to the _Morning Post_ which was on a low stand near, and
he read again a paragraph which had pleased him at breakfast:

"The Duke of Glastonbury and Lady Ethelrida Montfitchet entertained at
dinner last night a small party at Glastonbury House, among the guests
being--" and here he skipped some high-sounding titles and let his eye
feast upon his own name, "Mr. Francis Markrute."

Then he smiled and gazed into the fire, and no one would have recognized
his hard, blue eyes, as he said softly:

"Ethelrida! _belle et blonde!_"



CHAPTER III


While the financier was contentedly musing in his chair beside the fire,
his niece was hurrying into the park, wrapped in a dark cloak and thick
veil. She had slipped out noiselessly, a few minutes after she left the
library. The sun had completely set now and it was damp and cold, with
the dead leaves, and the sodden autumn feeling in the air. Zara Shulski
shivered, in spite of the big cloak, as she peered into the gloom of the
trees, when she got nearly to the Achilles statue. The rendezvous had
been for six o'clock; it was now twenty minutes past, and it was so bad
for Mirko to wait in the cold. Perhaps they would have gone on. But no;
she caught sight of two shabby figures, close up under the statue, when
she got sufficiently near.

They came forward eagerly to meet her. And even in the half light it
could be seen that the boy was an undersized little cripple of perhaps
nine or ten years old but looking much younger; as it could also be seen
that even in his worn overcoat and old stained felt hat the man was a
gloriously handsome creature.

"What joy to see you, Chérisette!" exclaimed the child. "Papa and I have
been longing and longing all the day. It seemed that six would never
come. But now that you are here let me eat you--eat you up!" And the
thin, little arms, too long for the wizened body, clasped fondly round
her neck as she lifted him, and carried him toward a seat where the
three sat down to discuss their affairs.

"I know nothing, you see, Mimo," the Countess Shulski said, "beyond that
you arrived yesterday. I think it was foolish of you to risk it. At
least in Paris Madame Dubois would have let you stay and owe a week's
rent. But here--among these strangers--"

"Now do not scold us, Mentor," the man answered, with a charming smile.
"Mirko and I felt the sun had fled when you went last Thursday. It
rained and rained two--three--days, and the Dubois canary got completely
on our nerves; and, heavens above! the Grisoldi insisted upon cooking
garlic in his food at every meal!--we had thought to have broken him of
the habit, you remember?--and up, up it came from his stove. Body of
Bacchus! It killed inspiration. I could not paint, my Chérisette, and
Mirko could not play. And so we said: 'At least--at least the sun of the
hair of our Chérisette must shine in the dark England; we, too, will go
there, away from the garlic and the canary, and the fogs will give us
new ideas, and we shall create wonderful things.' Is it not so, Mirko
mio?"

"But, of course, Papa," the boy echoed; and then his voice trembled with
a pitiful note. "You are not angry with us, darling Chérisette? Say it
is not so?"

"My little one! How can you! I could never be angry with my Mirko, no
matter what he did!" And the two pools of ink softened from the
expression of the black panther into the divine tenderness of the
Sistine Madonna, as she pressed the frail, little body to her side and
pulled her cloak around it.

"Only I fear it cannot be well for you here in London, and if my uncle
should know, all hope of getting anything from him may be over. He
expressly said if I would come quite alone, to stay with him for these
few weeks, it would be to my advantage; and my advantage means yours, as
you know. Otherwise do you think I would have eaten of his hateful
bread?"

"You are so good to us, Chérisette," the man Mimo said. "You have,
indeed, a sister of the angels, Mirko mio; but soon we shall be all rich
and famous. I had a dream last night, and already I have begun a new
picture of grays and mists--of these strange fogs!"

Count Mimo Sykypri was a confirmed optimist.

"Meanwhile you are in the one room, in Neville Street, Tottenham Court
Road. It is, I fear, a poor neighborhood."

"No worse than Madame Dubois'," Mimo hastened to reassure her, "and
London is giving me new ideas."

Mirko coughed harshly with a dry sound. Countess Shulski drew him closer
to her and held him tight.

"You got the address from the Grisoldi? He was a kind little old man, in
spite of the garlic," she said.

"Yes, he told us of it, as an inexpensive resting place, until our
affairs prospered, and we came straight there and wrote to you at once."

"I was greatly surprised to receive the letter. Have you any money at
all now, Mimo?"

"Indeed, yes!" And Count Sykypri proudly drew forth eight bits of French
gold from his pocket. "We had two hundred francs when we arrived. Our
little necessities and a few paints took up two of the twenty-franc
pieces, and we have eight of them left! Oh, quite a fortune! It will
keep us until I can sell the 'Apache.' I shall take it to a picture
dealer's to-morrow."

Countess Shulski's heart sank. She knew so well of old how long eight
twenty-franc pieces would be likely to last! In spite of Mirko's care
and watching of his father that gentleman was capable of giving one of
them to a beggar if the beggar's face and story touched him, and any of
the others could go in a present to Mirko or herself--to be pawned
later, when necessity called. The case was hopeless as far as money was
concerned with Count Sykypri.

Her own meager income, derived from the dead Shulski, was always
forestalled for the wants of the family--the little brother whom she had
promised her dead and adored mother never to desert.

For when the beautiful wife of Maurice Grey, the misanthropic and
eccentric Englishman who lived in a castle near Prague, ran off with
Count Mimo Sykypri, her daughter, then aged thirteen, had run with her,
and the pair had been wiped off the list of the family. And Maurice
Grey, after cursing them both and making a will depriving them of
everything, shut himself up in his castle, and steadily drank himself to
death in less than a year. And the brother of the beautiful Mrs. Grey,
Francis Markrute, never forgave her either. He refused to receive her or
hear news of her, even after poor little Mirko was born and she married
Count Sykypri.

For on the father's side, the Markrute brother and sister were of very
noble lineage; even with his bar sinister the financier could not brook
the disgrace of Elinka. He had loved her so--the one soft side of his
adamantine character. Her disgrace, it seemed, had frozen all the
tenderness in his nature.

Countess Shulski was silent for a few moments, while both Mimo and Mirko
watched her face anxiously. She had thrown back her veil.

"And supposing you do not sell the 'Apache,' Mimo? Your own money does
not come in until Christmas; mine is all gone until January, and it is
the cold winter approaching--and cold is not good for Mirko. What then?"

Count Sykypri moved uneasily. A tragic look grew in his handsome face;
his face that was a mirror of all passing emotions; his face that had
been able to express love and romance, devotion and tenderness, to wile
a bird from off a tree or love from the heart of any woman. And even
though Zara Shulski knew of just how little value was anything he said
or did yet his astonishing charm always softened her irritation toward
his fecklessness. So she repeated more gently:

"What then?"

Mimo got up and flung out his arms in a dramatic way.

"It cannot be!" he said. "I must sell the 'Apache!' Besides, if I don't:
I tell you these strange, gray fogs are giving me new, wonderful
thoughts--dark, mysterious--two figures meeting in the mist! Oh! but a
wonderful combination that will be successful in all cases."

Mirko pressed his arm round his sister's neck and kissed her cheek,
while he cooed love words in a soft Slavonic language. Two big tears
gathered in Zara Shulski's deep eyes and made them tender as a dove's.

She drew out her purse and counted from it two sovereigns and some
shillings which she slipped into Mirko's small hand.

"Keep these, pet, for an emergency," she said. "They are all I have, but
I will--I must--find some other way for you soon: and now I shall have
to go. If my uncle should suspect I am seeing you I might be powerless
to help further."

They walked with her to the Grosvenor Gate, and reluctantly let her
leave them; and then they watched her, as she sped across the road
between the passing taxi-cabs. When they saw the light from the opening
door and her figure disappearing between the tall servants who had come
to open it, the two poor, shabby figures walked on with a sigh, to try
to find an omnibus which would put them down somewhere near their dingy
bedroom in Neville Street, Tottenham Court Road. And as they reached the
Marble Arch there came on a sharp shower of icy rain.

Countess Shulski, however poorly dressed, was a person to whom servants
were never impertinent; there was something in her bearing which
precluded all idea of familiarity. It did not even strike Turner, or
James, that her clothes were what none of the housemaids would have
considered fit to wear when they went out. The remark the lordly Turner
made, as he arranged some letters on the hall table, was:

"A very haughty lady, James--quite a bit of the Master about her, eh?"

But she went on to the lift, slowly, and to her luxurious bedroom, her
heart full of pain and rage against fate. Here she sat down before the
fire, and, resting her chin on her two hands, gazed steadily into the
glowing coals.

What pictures did she see of past miseries there in the flames? Her
thoughts wandered right back to the beginning. The stern, peculiar
father, and the gloomy castle. The severe governesses--English and
German--and her adorable, beautiful mother, descending upon the
schoolroom like a fairy of light, always gay and sweet and loving. And
then of that journey to a far country, where she saw an old, old, dying
gentleman in a royal palace, who kissed her, and told her she would
grow as beautiful as her grandmother with the red, red hair. And there
in the palace was Mimo, so handsome and kind in his glittering
aide-de-camp's uniform, who after that often came to the gloomy castle,
and, with the fairy mother, to the schoolroom. Ah! those days were happy
days! How they three had shrieked with laughter and played hide-and-seek
in the long galleries!

And then the blank, hideous moment when the angel fairy had gone, and
the stern father cursed and swore, and Uncle Francis' face looked like a
vengeful fiend's. And then a day when she got word to meet her mother in
the park of the castle. How she clung to her and cried and sobbed to be
taken, too! And they--Mimo and the mother--always so kind and loving and
irresponsible, consented. And then the flight; and weeks of happiness in
luxurious hotels, until the mother's face grew pinched and white, and no
letters but her own--returned--came from Uncle Francis. And ever the
fear grew that if Mimo were absent from her for a moment Uncle Francis
would kill him. The poor, adored mother! And then of the coming of
Mirko and all their joy over it; and then, gradually, the skeleton of
poverty, when all the jewels had been sold and all Mimo's uniform and
swords; and nothing but his slender income, which could not be taken
from him, remained. How he had worked to be a real artist, there in
Paris! Oh! poor Mimo. He had tried, but everything was so against a
gentleman; and Mirko such a delicate baby, and the mother's lovely face
so often sad. And then the time of the mother's first bad illness--how
they had watched and prayed, and Mimo had cried tears like a child, and
the doctor had said the South was the only thing to help their angel's
recovery. So to marry Ladislaus Shulski seemed the only way. He had a
villa in the sun at Nice and offered it to them; he was crazy about
her--Zara--at that time, though her skirts were not quite long, nor her
splendid hair done up.

When her thoughts reached this far, the black panther in the Zoo never
looked fiercer when Francis Markrute poked his stick between its bars to
stir it up on Sunday mornings.

The hateful, hateful memories! When she came to know what marriage
meant, and--a man! But it had saved the sweet mother's life for that
winter. And though it was a strain to extract anything from Ladislaus,
still, in the years that followed, often she had been able to help until
his money, too, was all gone--on gambling and women.

And then the dear mother died--died in cold and poverty, in a poor
little studio in Paris--in spite of her daughter's and Mimo's frantic
letters to Uncle Francis for help. She knew now that he had been far
away, in South Africa, at the time, and had never received them, until
too late; but then, it seemed as if God Himself had forsaken them. And
now came the memory of her solemn promise. Mirko should never be
deserted--the adored mother could die in peace about that. Her last
words came back now--out of the glowing coals:

"I have been happy with Mimo, after all, my Chérisette, with you and
Mimo and Mirko. It was worth while--" And so she had gasped--and died.

And here the tears gathered and blurred the flaming coals. But Zara's
decision had come. There was no other way. To her uncle's bargain she
must consent.

She got up abruptly and flung her hat on the bed--her cloak had already
fallen from her--and without further hesitation she descended the
stairs.

Francis Markrute was still seated in his library; he had taken out his
watch and was calculating the time. It was twenty-five minutes to eight;
his guests would be coming to dine at eight o'clock and he had not begun
to dress. Would his niece have made up her mind by then?

That there could be any doubt about the fact that she would make up her
mind as he wished never entered his head. It was only a question of time
but it would be better, for every reason, if she arrived at the
conclusion at once.

He rose from his chair with a quiet smile as she entered the room. So
she had come! He had not relied upon his knowledge of a woman's
temperament in vain.

She was very pale. The extra whiteness showed even on her gardenia skin,
and her great eyes gleamed sullenly from beneath her lowering brows of
ink.

"If the terms are for the certain happiness of Mirko I consent," she
said.



CHAPTER IV


The four men--the two railway magnates, Francis Markrute, and Lord
Tancred--had all been waiting a quarter of an hour before the
drawing-room fire when the Countess Shulski sailed into the room. She
wore an evening gown of some thin, black, transparent, woolen stuff,
which clung around her with the peculiar grace her poorest clothes
acquired. Another woman would have looked pitifully shabby in such a
dress, but her distinction made it appear to at least three of the men
as the robe of a goddess. Francis Markrute was too annoyed at the delay
of her coming to admire anything; but even he, as he presented his
guests to her, could not help remarking that he had never seen her look
more wonderful, nor more contemptuously regal.

They had had rather a stormy scene in the library, half an hour before.
Her words had been few, but their displeasure had been unconcealed. She
would agree to the bare bargain, if so be this strange man were willing,
but she demanded to know the reason of his willingness.

And when she was told it was a business matter between the two men, and
that she would be given a large fortune, she expressed no more surprise
than a disdainful curl of the lips.

For her, all men were either brutes--or fools like poor Mimo.

If she had known that Lord Tancred had already refused her hand and
that her uncle was merely counting upon his own unerring knowledge of
human nature--and Lord Tancred's nature in particular--she might have
felt humiliated, instead of full of impotent rage.

The young man, for his part, had arrived exactly on the stroke of eight,
a rare effort of punctuality for him. Some underneath excitement to see
his friend Markrute's niece had tingled in his veins from the moment he
had left the house.

What sort of a woman could it be who would be willing to marry a
perfect stranger for the sake of his title and position? The
quarter-of-an-hour's wait had not added to his calm. So when the door
had eventually opened for her entry he had glanced up with intense
interest, and had then drawn in his breath as she advanced up the room.
The physical part of the lady at all events was extremely delectable.

But when he was presented and his eyes met hers he was startled by the
look of smoldering, somber hate he saw in them.

What could it all mean? Francis must have been romancing. Why should she
look at him like that, if she were willing to marry him? He was piqued
and interested.

She spoke not a word as they went down to dinner, but he was no raw
youth to be snubbed thus into silence. His easy, polished manner soon
started a conversation upon the usual everyday things. He received "Yes"
and "No" for answers. The railway magnate on her other side was hardly
more fortunate, until the entrées were in full swing, then she unfroze a
little; the elderly gentleman had said something which interested her.

The part which particularly irritated Lord Tancred was that he felt sure
she was not really stupid--who could be stupid with such a face? And he
was quite unaccustomed to being ignored by women. A like experience had
not occurred to him in the whole of his life.

He watched her narrowly. He had never seen so white a skin; the
admirably formed bones of her short, small face caused, even in a side
light, no disfiguring shadows to fall beside the mouth and nose, nor on
the cheeks; all was velvety smooth and rounded. The remote Jewish touch
was invisible--save in the splendor of the eyes and lashes. She filled
him with the desire to touch her, to clasp her tightly in his arms, to
pull down that glorious hair and bury his face in it. And Lord Tancred
was no sensualist, given to instantly appraising the outward charm of
women.

When the grouse was being handed, he did get a whole sentence from her;
it was in answer to his question whether she liked England.

"How can one say--when one does not know?" she said. "I have only been
here once before, when I was quite a child. It seems cold and dark."

"We must persuade you to like it better," he answered, trying to look
into her eyes which she had instantly averted. The expression of
resentment still smoldered there, he had noticed, during their brief
glance.

"Of what consequence whether I like it or no," she said, looking across
the table, and this was difficult to answer! It seemed to set him upon
his beam-ends. He could not very well say because he had suddenly begun
to admire her very much! At this stage he had not decided what he meant
to do.

An unusual excitement was permeating his being; he could not account for
how or why. He had felt no sensation like it, except on one of his lion
hunts in Africa when the news had come into camp that an exceptionally
fine beast had been discovered near and might be stalked on the morrow.
His sporting instincts seemed to be thoroughly awakened.

Meanwhile Countess Shulski had turned once more to Sir Philip Armstrong,
the railway magnate. He was telling her about Canada and she listened
with awakening interest: how there were openings for every one and great
fortunes could be made there by the industrious and persevering.

"It has not come to a point, then, when artists could have a chance, I
suppose?" she asked. Lord Tancred wondered at the keenness in her voice.

"Modern artists?" Sir Philip queried. "Perhaps not, though the rich men
are beginning to buy pictures and beautiful things, too; but in a new
country it is the man of sinew and determination, not the dreamer, who
succeeds."

Her head then drooped a little; her interest now seemed only mechanical,
as she answered again, "Yes" and "No."

Lord Tancred wondered and wondered; he saw that her thoughts were far
away.

Francis Markrute had been watching things minutely while he kept up his
suave small talk with Colonel Macnamara on his right hand. He was well
pleased with the turn of events. After all, nothing could have been
better than Zara's being late. Circumstance often played into the hand
of an experienced manipulator like himself. Now if she only kept up this
attitude of indifference, which, indeed, she seemed likely to do--she
was no actress, he knew--things might be settled this very night.

Lord Tancred could not get her to have a single continued conversation
for the remainder of dinner; he was perfectly raging with annoyance, his
fighting blood was up. And when at the first possible moment after the
dessert arrived she swept from the room, her eyes met his as he held the
door and they were again full of contemptuous hate.

He returned to his seat with his heart actually thumping in his side.

And all through the laborious conversation upon Canada and how best to
invest capital, which Francis Markrute with great skill and apparently
hearty friendship prolonged to its utmost limits, he felt the attraction
and irritation of the woman grow and grow. He no longer took the
slightest interest in the pros and cons of his future in the Colony, and
when, at last, he heard the distant tones of Tschaikovsky's _Chanson
Triste_ as they ascended the stairs he came suddenly to a determination.
She was sitting at the grand piano in the back part of the room. A huge,
softly shaded lamp shed its veiled light upon her white face and rounded
throat; her hands and arms, which showed to the elbow, seemed not less
pale than the ivory keys, and those disks of black velvet gazed in front
of them, a whole world of anguish in their depths.

For this was the tune that her mother had loved, and she was playing it
to remind herself of her promise and to keep herself firm in her
determination to accept the bargain, for her little brother Mirko's
sake.

She glanced at Lord Tancred as he entered. Count Ladislaus Shulski had
been a very handsome man, too. She did not know enough of the English
type to judge of Lord Tancred morally. She only saw that he was a
splendid, physical creature who would be strong--and horrible
probably--like the rest.

The whole expression of her face changed as he came and leaned upon the
piano. The sorrow died out of her eyes and was replaced by a fierce
defiance; and her fingers broke into a tarantella of wild sounds.

"You strange woman!" Lord Tancred said.

"Am I strange?" she answered through her teeth. "It is said by those who
know that we are all mad--at some time and at some point. I have, I
think, reason to be mad to-night." And with that she crashed a final
chord, rose from her seat, and crossed the room.

"I hope, Uncle Francis, your guests will excuse me," she said, with an
imperial, aloof politeness, "but I am very tired. I will wish you all a
good-night." She bowed to them as they expressed their regrets, and then
slowly left the room.

"Goodnight, madame," Lord Tancred said, at the door. "Some day you and I
will cross swords."

But he was rewarded by no word, only an annihilating glance from her
sullen eyes, and he stood there and gazed at her as she passed up the
stairs.

"An extraordinary and beautiful woman--your niece--eh, my dear
Markrute?" he heard one of the pompous gentlemen say, as he returned to
the group by the fire, and it angered him--he could not have told why.

Francis Markrute, who knew his moments, began now to talk about her,
casually; how she was an interesting, mysterious character; beautiful?
well, no, not exactly that--a superlative skin, fine eyes and hair, but
no special features.

"I will not admit that she is beautiful, my friend," he said. "Beauty
suggests gentleness and tenderness. My niece reminds me of the black
panther in the Zoo, but one could not say--if she were tamed."

Such remarks were not calculated to allay the growing interest and
attraction Lord Tancred was feeling. Francis Markrute knew his audience;
he never wasted his words. He abruptly turned the conversation back to
Canada again, until even the two magnates on their own ground were bored
and said goodnight. The four men came downstairs together. As the two
others were being assisted into their coats by Turner and his satellites
the host said to Lord Tancred:

"Will you have a cigar with me, Tancred, before you go on to your supper
party?" And presently they were both seated in mammoth armchairs in the
cozy library.

"I hope, my dear boy, you have all the information you want about
Canada," Mr. Markrute said. "You could not find two more influential
people than Sir Philip and the Colonel. I asked--" but Lord Tancred
interrupted him.

"I don't care a farthing more about Canada!" he flashed out. "I have
made up my mind. If you really meant what you said to-day, I will marry
your niece, and I don't care whether she has a penny or no."

The financier's plans had indeed culminated with a rush!

But he expressed no surprise, merely raised his eyebrows mildly and
puffed some blue rings of smoke, as he answered:

"I always mean what I say, only I do not care for people to do things
blindly. Now that you have seen my niece are you sure she would suit
you? I thought, after all, perhaps not, to-night: she is certainly a
difficult person. It would be no easy task for any man to control
her--as a wife."

[Illustration: "The whole expression of her face changed as he came and
leaned upon the piano."]

"I don't care for tame women," Lord Tancred said. "It is that very
quality of difficulty which has inspired me. By George! did you ever see
such a haughty bearing? It will take a man's whole intelligence to know
which bit to use."

"She may close her teeth on whatever bit you use, and bolt with it. Do
not say afterwards that I let you take her blindly."

"Why does she look at me with such hate?" Lord Tancred was just going to
ask--and then he stopped himself. It was characteristic of him that now
he had made up his mind he would not descend to questions or details--he
would find all out later for himself--but one thing he must know: had
she really consented to marry him? If so, she had her own reasons, of
course, and desire for himself was not among them; but, somehow, he felt
sure they were not sordid or paltry ones. He had always liked dangerous
games--the most unbroken polo ponies to train in the country, the
freshest horses, the fiercest beasts to stalk and kill--and why not a
difficult wife? It would add an adorable spice to the affair. But as he
was very honest with himself he knew, underneath, that it was not wholly
even this instinct, but that she had cast some spell over him and that
he must have her for his own.

"You might very well ask her history," Francis Markrute said. He could
be so gracious when he liked, and he really admired the wholehearted
dash with which Lord Tancred had surrendered; there was something big
and royal about it--he himself never gambled in small sums either. "So
as I expect you won't," he continued, "I will tell you. She is the
daughter of Maurice Grey, a brother of old Colonel Grey of Hentingdon,
whom everybody knew, and she has been the widow of an unspeakable brute
for over a year. She was an immaculate wife, and devoted daughter before
that. The possibilities of her temperament are all to come."

Lord Tancred sprang from his chair, the very thought of her and her
temperament made him thrill. Was it possible he was already in love,
after one evening?

"Now we must really discuss affairs, my dear boy," the financier went
on. "Her dower, as I told you, will be princely."

"That I absolutely refuse to do, Francis," Lord Tancred answered. "I
tell you I want the woman for my wife. You can settle the other things
with my lawyer if you care to, and tie it all up on her. I am not
interested in that matter. The only thing I really wish to know is if
you are sure she will marry me?"

"I am perfectly sure." The financier narrowed his eyes. "I would not
have suggested the affair to-day if I had had any doubt about that."

"Then it is settled, and I shall not ask why. I shall not ask any thing.
Only when may I see her again and how soon can we be married?"

"Come and lunch with me in the city to-morrow, and we will talk over
everything. I shall have seen her, and can then tell you when to present
yourself. And I suppose you can have the ceremony at the beginning of
November?"

"Six whole weeks hence!" Lord Tancred said, protestingly. "Must she get
such heaps of clothes? Can't it be sooner? I wanted to be here for my
Uncle Glastonbury's first shoot on the 2nd of November, and if we are
only married then, we shall be off on a honeymoon. You must come to that
shoot, by-the-way, old boy, it is the pleasantest of the whole lot he
has; one day at the partridges, and a dash at the pheasants; but he only
asks the jolliest parties to this early one, for Ethelrida's birthday,
and none of the bores."

"It would give me great pleasure to do so," Francis Markrute said. And
he looked down so that Lord Tancred should not see the joy in his eyes.

Then they shook hands most heartily, and the newly made fiancé said
good-night, with the happy assurance in his ears that he might claim his
bride in time to be back from a week's honeymoon for the Glastonbury
shoot.

When he had gone Francis Markrute's first act was to sit down and write
a four-figure check for the Cripple Children's Hospital: he believed in
thankofferings. Then he rubbed his hands softly together as he went up
to his bed.



CHAPTER V


Then Lord Tancred left the house in Park Lane he did not go on to the
supper party at the Savoy he had promised to attend. That sort of
affair had bored him, now for several years. Instead, he drove straight
back to his rooms in St. James' Street, and, getting comfortably into
his pet chair, he steadily set himself to think. He had acted upon a
mad impulse; he knew that and did not argue with himself about it, or
regret it. Some force stronger than anything he had hitherto known had
compelled him to come to the decision. And what would his future life
be like with this strange woman? That could not be exactly guessed.
That it would contain scenes of the greatest excitement he did not
doubt. She would in all cases look the part. His mother herself--the
Lady Tancred, daughter of the late and sister of the present Duke of
Glastonbury--could not move with more dignity: a thought which reminded
him that he had better write to his parent and inform her of his
intended step. He thought of all the women he had loved--or imagined he
had loved--since he left Eton. The two affairs which had convulsed him
during his second year at Oxford were perhaps the most serious; the
Laura Highford, his last episode, was fortunately over and had always
been rather tiresome. In any case none of those ladies of the world--or
other world--had any reasons to reproach him, and he was free and
happy. And if he wished to put down a large stake on the card of
marriage he was answerable to no one.

During the last eight hundred years, ever since Amaury Guiscard of that
house of Hauteville whose daring deeds gave sovereigns to half Europe,
had come over with his Duke William, and had been rewarded by the gift
of the Wrayth lands--seized from the Saxons--his descendants had
periodically done madly adventurous things. Perhaps the quality was
coming out in him!

Then he thought of his lady, personally, and not of the
extraordinariness of his action. She was exasperatingly attractive. How
delicious it would be when he had persuaded her to talk to him, taught
her to love him, because she certainly must love him--some day! It was
rather cold-blooded of her to be willing to marry him, a stranger; but
he was not going to permit himself to dwell upon that. She could not be
really cold-blooded with that face: its every line bespoke capability of
exquisite passion. It was not the least cunning, or calculating, either.
It was simply adorable. And to kiss! But here he pulled himself together
and wrote to his mother a note, short and to the point, which she
received by the first post next morning at her small, house in Queen
Street, Mayfair; and then he went to bed. The note ran:

"My Dear Mother:

"I am going to be married at last. The lady is a daughter of Maurice
Grey (a brother of old Colonel Grey of Hentingdon who died last year),
and the widow of a Pole named Shulski, Countess Shulski she is called."

(He had paused here because he had suddenly remembered he did not know
her Christian name!)

"She is also the niece of Francis Markrute whom you have such an
objection to--or had, last season. She is most beautiful and I hope you
will like her. Please go and call to-morrow. I will come and breakfast
with you about ten.

"Your affectionate son, Tancred."

And this proud English mother knew here was a serious letter, because he
signed it "Tancred." He usually finished his rare communications with
just, "love from Tristram."

She leaned back on her pillows and closed her eyes. She adored her son
but she was, above all things, a woman of the world and given to making
reasonable judgments. Tristram was past the age of a foolish
entanglement; there must be some strong motive in this action. He could
hardly be in love. She knew him so well, when he was in love! He had
shown no signs of it lately--not, really, for several years--for that
well conducted--friendship--with Laura Highford could not be called
being in love. Then she thought of Francis Markrute. He was so immensely
rich, she could not help a relieved sigh. There would be money at all
events. But she knew that could not be the reason. She was aware of her
son's views about rich wives. She was aware, too, that with all his
sporting tastes and modern irreverence of tradition, underneath he was
of a proud, reserved nature, intensely proud of the honor of his ancient
name. What then could be the reason for this engagement? Well, she would
soon know. It was half-past eight in the morning, and Tristram's "about
ten" would not mean later than, half-past, or a quarter to eleven. She
rang the bell for her maid, and told her to ask the young ladies to put
on dressing-gowns and come to her.

Soon Lord Tancred's two sisters entered the room.

They were nice, fresh English girls, and stood a good deal in awe of
their mother. They kissed her and sat down on the bed. They felt it was
a momentous moment, because Lady Tancred never saw any one until her
hair was arranged--not even her own daughters.

"Your brother Tristram is going to be married," she said and referred to
the letter lying on the coverlet, "to a Countess Shulski, a niece of
that Mr. Markrute whom one meets about."

"Oh! Mother!" and "Really!" gasped Emily and Mary.

"Have we seen her?"

"Do we know her?"

"No, I think we can none of us have seen her. She certainly was not with
Mr. Markrute at Cowes, and no one has been in town, except this last
week for Flora's wedding. I suppose Tristram must have met her in
Scotland, or possibly abroad. He went to Paris, you remember, at Easter,
and again in July."

"I wonder what she is like," said Emily.

"Is she young?" asked Mary.

"Tristram does not say," replied Lady Tancred, "only that she is
beautiful."

"We are so surprised," both girls gasped together.

"Yes, it is unexpected, certainly," agreed their mother, "but Tristram
has judgment; he is not likely to have chosen any one of whom I should
disapprove. You must be ready to call with me, directly after lunch.
Tristram is coming to breakfast, so you can have yours now--in your
room. I must talk to him."

And the girls, who were dying to ask a hundred thousand questions, felt
that they were dismissed, and, kissing their dignified parent, they
retired to their own large, back room, which they shared, in common
with all their pleasures and little griefs, together.

"Isn't it too wonderful, Em?" Mary said, when they were back there, both
curled up in the former's bed waiting for their breakfast. "One can see
Mother is very much moved; she was so stern. I thought Tristram was
devoted to Laura Highford, did not you?"

"Oh! he has been sick of that for ages and ages. She nags at him--she is
a cat anyway and I never could understand it, could you, Mary?"

"Men have to be like that," said Mary, wisely, "they must have some one,
I mean, to play with, and they are afraid of girls."

"How I hope she will like us, don't you?" Emily said. "Mr. Markrute is
very rich and perhaps she is, too. How lovely it will be if they are
able to live at Wrayth. How lovely to have it opened again--to go and
stay there!"

"Yes, indeed," said Mary.

Lady Tancred awaited her son in the small front morning-room. She was
quite as much a specimen of an English aristocrat as he was, with her
brushed-back, gray hair, and her beautiful, hard, fine-featured face.
She was supremely dignified, and dressed well and with care. She had
been brought up in the school which taught the repression of all
emotion--now, alas! rapidly passing away--so that she did not even tap
her foot from the impatience which was devouring her, and it was nearly
eleven o'clock before Tristram made his appearance!

He apologized charmingly, and kissed her cheek. His horse, Satan, had
been particularly fresh, and he had been obliged to give him an extra
canter twice round the Row, before coming in, and was breakfast
ready?--as he was extremely hungry! Yes, breakfast was ready, and they
went into the dining-room where the old butler awaited them.

"Give me everything, Michelham," said his lordship, "I am ravenous. Then
you can go. Her ladyship will pour out the coffee."

The old servant beamed upon him, with a "glad to see your lordship's
well!" and, surrounding his plate with hot, covered, silver dishes,
quietly made his exit, and so they were alone.

Lady Tancred beamed upon her son, too. She could not help it. He looked
so completely what he ought to look, she thought--magnificently healthy
and handsome, and perfectly groomed. No mother could help being proud of
him.

"Tristram, dear boy, now tell me all about it," she said.

"There is hardly anything to tell you, Mother, except that I am going to
be married about the 25th of October--and--you will be awfully nice to
her--to Zara--won't you?" He had taken the precaution to send round a
note, early in the morning, to Francis Markrute, asking for his lady's
full name, as he wished to tell his family; so the "Zara" came out quite
naturally! "She is rather a peculiar person, and--er--has very stiff
manners. You may not like her at first."

"No, dear?" said Lady Tancred hesitatingly, "Stiff manners you say? That
at least is on the right side. I always deplore the modern
free-and-easy-ness."

"Oh, there is nothing free-and-easy about her!" said Tristram, helping
himself to a cutlet, while he smiled almost grimly. His sense of humor
was highly aroused oven the whole thing; only that overmastering
something which drew him was even stronger than this.

Then he felt that there was no use in allowing his mother to drag
information from him; he had better tell her what he meant her to know.

"You see, Mother, the whole thing has been arranged rather suddenly. I
only settled upon it last night myself, and so told you at once. She
will be awfully rich, which is rather a pity in a sense--though I
suppose we shall live at Wrayth again, and all that--- but I need not
tell you I am not marrying her for such a reason."

"No, I know you," Lady Tancred said, "but I cannot agree with you about
its being a pity that she is rich. We live in an age when the oldest and
most honored name is useless without money to keep up its traditions,
and any woman would find your title and your position well worth all her
gold. There are things you will give her in return which only hundreds
of years can produce. You must have no feeling that you are accepting
anything from her which you do not equalize. Remember, it is a false
sentiment."

"Oh, I expect so--and she is well bred, you know, so she won't throw it
in my teeth." And Lord Tancred smiled.

"I remember old Colonel Grey," his mother continued; "years ago he drove
a coach; but I don't recollect his brother. Did he live abroad,
perhaps?"

This was an awkward question. The young fiancé was quite ignorant about
his prospective bride's late father!

"Yes," he said hurriedly. "Zara married very young, she is quite young
now--only about twenty-three. Her husband was a brute, and now she has
come to live with Francis Markrute. He is an awfully good fellow,
Mother, though you don't like him; extremely cultivated, and so quaintly
amusing, with his cynical views on life. You will like him when you know
him better. He is a jolly good sportsman, too--for a foreigner."

"And of what nation is Mr. Markrute, Tristram, do you know?" Lady
Tancred asked.

Really, all women--even mothers--were tiresome at times with their
questions!

"'Pon my word, I don't." And he laughed awkwardly. "Austrian, perhaps,
or Russian. I have never thought about it; he speaks English so well,
and he is a naturalized Englishman, in any case."

"But as you are marrying into the family, don't you think it would be
more prudent, dear, to gather some information on the subject?" Lady
Tancred hazarded.

And then she saw the true Tancred spirit come out, which she had often
vainly tried to combat in her husband during her first years of married
life, and had desisted in the end. Tristram's strong, level eyebrows
joined themselves in a frown, and his mouth, clean-shaven and chiseled,
shut like a vice.

"I am going to do what I am going to do, Mother," he said. "I am
satisfied with my bargain, and I beg of you to accept the situation. I
do not demand any information, and I ask you not to trouble yourself
either. Nothing any one could say would change me--Give me some more
coffee, will you, please."

Lady Tancred's hand trembled a little as she poured it out, but she did
not say anything, and there was silence for a minute, while his lordship
went on with his breakfast, with appetite unimpaired.

"I will take the girls and call there immediately after lunch," she said
presently, "and I am to ask for the Countess Shulski. You pronounce it
like that, do you not?"

"Yes. She may not be in, and in any case, perhaps, for to-day only leave
cards. To-morrow or next day I'll go with you, Mother. You see, until
the announcement comes out in the _Morning Post_, everything is not
quite settled--I expect Zara would like it better if you did not meet
until after then."

That was probably true, he reflected, since he had not even exchanged
personal pledges with her yet himself!

Then, as his mother looked stiffly repulsed, his sense of humor got the
better of him, and he burst into a peal of laughter, while he jumped up
and kissed her with the delightful, caressing boyishness which made her
love him with a love so far beyond what she gave to her other children.

"Darling," she murmured, "if you are so happy as to laugh like that I am
happy, too, and will do just what you wish." Her proud eyes filled with
mist and she pressed his hand.

"Mum, you are a trump!" he said, and he kissed her again and, holding
her arm, he led her back into the morning-room.

"Now I must go and change these things," he announced, as he looked down
at his riding clothes. "I am going to lunch with Markrute in the City to
discuss all the points. So good-bye for the present. I will probably see
you to-night. Call a taxi," he said to Michelham who at that moment came
into the room with a note. He had kissed his mother and was preparing to
leave, when just as he got to the door he turned and said:

"Don't say a word to any one, to-day, of the news--let it come out in
the _Morning Post_, to-morrow. I ask it--please?"

"Not even to Cyril? You have forgotten that he is coming up from Uncle
Charles' to go back to Eton," his mother said, "and the girls already
know."

"Oh! Cyril. By Jove! I had forgotten! Yes, tell him; he is a first class
chap, he'll understand, and, I say"--and he pulled some sovereigns from
his pocket--"do give him these from me for this term."

Then with a smile he went.

And a few minutes afterwards a small, slender boy of fourteen, with only
Eton's own inimitable self-confidence and delicious swagger printed upon
his every line, drove up to the door, and, paying for the taxi in a
lordly way, came into his mother's morning-room. There had been a gap in
the family after Tristram's appearance, caused by the death, from
diphtheria, of two other boys; then came the two girls of twenty and
nineteen respectively and, lastly, Cyril.

His big, blue eyes rounded with astonishment and interest when he heard
the important news. All he said was:

"Well, she must be a corker, if Tristram thinks her good enough. But
what a beastly nuisance! He won't go to Canada now, I suppose, and we
shan't have that ranch."



CHAPTER VI


Francis Markrute also saw his niece at breakfast--or rather--just after
it. She was finishing hers in the little upstairs sitting-room which he
had allotted to her for her personal use, when he tapped at the door and
asked if he might come in.

She said "yes," and then rose, with the ceremonious politeness she
always used in her dealings with him--contemptuous, resentful politeness
for the most part.

"I have come to settle the details of your marriage," he said, while he
waved her to be seated again and took a chair himself. At the word
"marriage" her nostrils quivered, but she said nothing. She was always
extremely difficult to deal with, on account of these silences of hers.
She helped no one out. Francis Markrute knew the method himself and
admired it; it always made the other person state his case.

"You saw Lord Tancred last night. You can have no objection to him on
the ground of his person, and he is a very great gentleman, my niece, as
you will find."

Still silence.

"I have arranged with him for you to be married in October--about the
25th, I suppose. So now comes the question of your trousseau. You must
have clothes to fit you for so great a position. You had better get them
in Paris." Then he paused, struck by the fact which he had only just
noticed, that the garments she had been wearing and those she now wore
were shabby enough. He realized the reason he had not before remarked
this--her splendid carriage and air of breeding--and it gave him a
thrill of pride in her. After all, she was his own niece.

"It will be a very great joy to dress you splendidly," he said. "I would
have done so always, if I had not known where the money would go; but we
are going to settle all that now, and every one can be happy."

It was not in her nature to beg and try to secure favors for her brother
and Mimo without paying for them. She had agreed upon the
price--herself. Now all she had to do was to obtain as much as possible
for this.

"Mirko's cough has come back again," she said quietly. "Since I have
consented I want him to be able to go into the warmth without delay.
They are here in London now--he and his father--in a very poor place."

"I have thought it all out," Francis Markrute answered while he frowned,
as he always did, at the mention of Mimo. "There is a wonderfully clever
doctor at Bournemouth where the air is perfect for those delicate in the
lungs. I have communicated with him; and he will take the child into his
own house, where he will be beautifully cared for. There he can have a
tutor, and when he is stronger he can return to Paris, or to Vienna, and
have his talent for the violin cultivated. I want you to understand," he
continued, "that if you agree to my terms your brother will not be
stinted in any way."

And her thoughts said, "And Mimo?" but she felt it wiser not to ask
anything about him just then. To have Mirko cared for by a really clever
doctor, in good air, with some discipline as to bedtime, and not those
unwholesome meals, snatched at odd hours at some restaurant, seemed a
wonderfully good thing. If the little fellow would only be happy
separated from his father; that was the question!

"Are there children in the house?" she asked. Mirko was peculiar, and
did not like other little boys.

"The doctor has an only little girl of about your brother's age. He is
nine and a half, is it not so? And she is delicate, too, so they could
play together."

This sounded more promising.

"I would wish to go down and see the doctor first--and the home," she
said.

"You shall do so, of course, when you like. I will set aside a certain
sum every year, to be invested for him, so that when he grows up he will
have a competence--even a small fortune. I will have a deed drawn out
for you to sign; it shall be all _en règle_."

"That is well," she said. "And now give me some money, please, that I
may relieve their present necessities until my brother can go to this
place. I do not consent to give myself, unless I am certain that I free
those I love from anxieties. I should like, immediately, a thousand
francs. Forty pounds of your money, isn't it?"

"I will send the notes up in a few minutes," Francis Markrute said. He
was in the best of tempers to-day. "Meanwhile, that part of the
arrangement being settled, I must ask you to pay some attention to the
thought of seeing your fiancé."

"I do not wish to see him," she announced.

Her uncle smiled.

"Possibly not, but it is part of the bargain. You can't marry the man
without seeing him. He will come and call upon you this afternoon, and,
no doubt, will bring you a ring. I trust to your honor not to show so
plainly your dislike that no man could carry through his side. Please
remember your brother's welfare depends upon your actual marriage. If
you cause Lord Tancred to break off the match the bargain between you
and me is void."

The black panther's look again appeared in her eyes, and an icy
stillness settled upon her. But she began to speak rather fast, with a
catch in the breath between the sentences.

"Then, since you wish this so much for your own ends, which I cannot
guess, I tell you, arrange for me to go to Paris, alone, away from him,
until the wedding day. He must hate the thought as much as I do. We are
probably both only marionettes in your hands. Explain to the man that I
will not go through the degradation of the pretence of an engagement,
especially here in this England, where, _Maman_ said, they parade
affections, and fiancés are lovers. _Mon Dieu!_ I will play my part--for
the visits of ceremony to his family, which I suppose must take place
even here--but beyond that, after to-day, I will not see him alone nor
have any communication with him. Is it understood?"

Francis Markrute looked at her with growing admiration. She was
gorgeously attractive in this mood. He obtained endless pleasure out of
life by his habit of abstract observation. He was able to watch people
in the throes of emotion, like a master seeing his hunters being put
through their paces.

"It shall be understood," he said. He knew it was wiser to insist upon
no more; her temper would never brook it. He knew he could count upon
her honor and her pride to fulfill her part of the bargain if she were
not exasperated beyond bearing.

"I will explain everything to Lord Tancred at luncheon," he said, "that
you will receive him this afternoon, and that then you are going to
Paris, and will not return until the wedding. You will concede the
family interviews that are absolutely necessary, I suppose?"

"I have already said so; only let them be few and short."

"Then I will not detain you longer now. You are a beautiful woman,
Zara," Francis Markrute said, as he rose and kissed her hand. "None of
the royal ladies, your ancestresses, ever looked more like a queen." And
he bowed himself out of the room, leaving her in her silence.

When she was alone she clenched her hands and walked up and down for a
few moments, and her whole serpentine body writhed with passionate anger
and pain.

Yes, she was a beautiful woman, and had a right to her life and joys
like another--and now she was to be tied, and bound again to a husband!

_"Les Infâmes!"_ she hissed aloud. "But for that part, I will not bear
it! Until the wedding I will dissemble as best I can--but afterwards--!"

And if Lord Tancred could have seen her then he would have known that
all the courage he had used when he faced the big lion would be needed
soon again.

But before a servant brought up the envelope with the notes she had
calmed herself and was preparing to go out. The good part of the news
must be told to the two poor ones in their Tottenham Court Road retreat.

As she sped along in the taxi--her uncle had placed one of his several
motors at her disposal, but it was not for such localities--she argued
with herself that it would be wiser not to give Mimo all the money at
once. She knew that that would mean not only the necessary,
instantaneous move to a better lodging, but an expensive dinner at the
nearest restaurant as well, and certainly bonbons and small presents for
Mirko, and new clothes; twice as much would be spent, if credit could be
obtained; and then there would be the worry of the bills and the
anxiety. If only Mirko would consent to be parted from his fond and
irresponsible parent for a time it would be so much better for his
health, and his chance of becoming of some use in the world. Mimo always
meant so kindly and behaved so foolishly! With the money she personally
would get for her bargain Mimo should, somehow, be made comfortable in
some studio in Paris where he could paint those pictures which would not
sell, and might see his friends--he had still a few who, when his
clothes were in a sufficiently good state, welcomed him and his
charming, debonair smile. Mimo could be a delightfully agreeable guest,
even though he was changed by years and poverty.

And Mirko would be in healthy surroundings; surely it was worth it,
after all!

The taxi drew up in the mean street and she got out, paid the man, and
then knocked at the dingy door.

A slatternly, miserable, little general servant opened it. No, the
foreign gentleman and the little boy were not in, they said they would
be back in a few minutes--would the lady step up and wait? She followed
the lumpy, untidy figure upstairs to a large attic at the top. It was
always let as a studio, apparently. It had a fine northern light from a
big window, and was quite clean, though the wretched furniture spoke of
better days.

Cleanliness was one of Count Sykypri's peculiarities; he always kept
whatever room he was in tidy and clean. This orderly instinct seemed at
variance with all the rest of his easy-going character. It was the
fastidiousness of a gentleman, which never deserted him. Now Zara
recognized the old traveling rug hung on two easels, to hide the little
iron beds where he and Mirko slept. The new wonder, which would be bound
to sell, was begun there on a third easel. It did not look extremely
promising at its present stage. Mirko's violin and his father's, in
their cases, were on a chair beside a small pile of music; the water-jug
had in it a bunch of yellow chrysanthemums probably bought off a barrow.

The Countess Shulski had been through many vicissitudes with these two
since her husband's death, but seldom--only once perhaps--had they gone
down to such poverty-stricken surroundings. Generally it was some small
apartment in Paris, or Florence, that they occupied, with rather scanty
meals when the end of the quarter came. During Count Shulski's life she
had always either lived in some smart villa at Nice, or led a wandering
existence in hotels; and for months at a time, in later years, when he
disappeared, upon his own pleasures bent, he would leave her in some old
Normandy farmhouse, only too thankful to be free from his hateful
presence. Here Mimo and Mirko would join her, and while they painted and
played, she would read. Her whole inner life was spent with books. Among
the shady society her husband had frequented she had been known as "The
Stone." She never unbent, and while her beauty and extraordinary type
attracted all the men she came across they soon gave up their pursuit.
She was quite hopeless, they said--and half-witted, some added! No woman
could sit silent like that for hours, otherwise. Zara thought of all
these things, as she sat on the rickety chair in the Neville Street
lodging. How she had loathed that whole atmosphere! How she loathed
bohemians and adventurers, no words could tell.

While her mother had lived there had been none of them about. For all
her personal downfall, Elinka, Markrute's sister, and an emperor's
daughter, remained an absolute _grande dame_--never mixing or mingling
with any people but her own belongings.

But now that she was dead, poor Mimo had sometimes gone for company into
a class other than his own.

As yet Zara's thoughts had not turned upon her new existence which was
to be. She had drawn a curtain over it in her mind. She knew but vaguely
about life in England, she had never had any English friends. One or two
gamblers had often come to the Nice villa, but except that they were
better looking types and wore well made clothes, she had classed them
with the rest of her husband's acquaintances. She had read numbers of
English classics but practically no novels, so she could not very well
picture a state of things she was ignorant about. Sufficient for the day
was the evil thereof.

She was getting slightly impatient when at last the two came in.

They had been told of her arrival; she knew that by their glad, hurried
mounting of the stairs and the quick opening of the door.

"Chérisette, Angel! But what joy!" And Mirko hurled himself into her
arms, while Mimo kissed her hand. He never forgot his early palace
manners.

"I have brought you good news," she said, as she drew out two ten-pound
notes. "I have made my uncle see reason. Here is something for the
present. He has such a kind and happy scheme for Mirko's health. Listen,
and I will tell you about it."

They clustered around her while she explained in the most attractive
manner she could the picture of the boy's future, but in spite of all
that, his beautiful little face fell as he grasped that he was to leave
his father.

"It will only be for a time, darling," Zara said, "just until you get
quite well and strong, and learn some lessons. All little boys go to
school, and come home for the holidays. You know _Maman_ would have
wished you to be educated like a gentleman."

"But I hate other boys, and you have taught me so well. Oh! Chérisette,
what shall I do? And to whom play my violin, who will understand?"

"Oh, but Mirko mio, it is a splendid offer! Think, dear child, a
comfortable home and no anxieties," Mimo said. "Truly your sister is an
angel, and you must not be so ungrateful. Your cough will get quite
well; perhaps I can come and lodge in the town, and we could walk
together."

But Mirko pouted. Zara sighed and clasped her hands.

"If you only knew how hard it has been to obtain this much," she said,
with despair in her voice. "Oh, Mirko, if you love me you will accept
it! Can't you trust me that I would not ask you to go where they are
hard or cruel? I am going down to the place to-morrow, to see it and
judge for myself. Won't you be good and try to please me?"

Then the little cripple fell to sobbing and kissing her, nestling in her
arms with his curly head against her neck.

But in the end she comforted him, the never varying gentleness toward
him which she showed would have soothed the most peevish invalid.

So at last she was able to feel that her sacrifice, of which they must
always remain ignorant, would not be all in vain; Mirko appeared
reconciled to his fate, and would certainly benefit by more healthy
surroundings. Instinct told her there would be no use even suggesting to
her uncle that the child should stay with Mimo, the situation would have
become an _impasse_ if the boy had held out, and between them they would
have had only this forty pounds until Christmas--and then very little
more--and the life of hand-to-mouth poverty would have gone on and on,
while here were comfort and probable health, with a certainty of
welfare, and education, and a competence in the future. And who knows
but Mirko might grow into a great artist one day!

This possible picture she painted in glowing colors until the child's
pathetic, dark eyes glistened with pleasure.

Then she became practical; they must change their lodging and find a
better one. But here Mimo interfered. They were really very comfortable
where they were, he urged, humble though it looked, and changing was
unpleasant. If they were able to buy some linen sheets and a new suit of
clothes for each it would be much better to stay for the present, until
Mirko's going to Bournemouth should be completely settled. "And even
then," Count Sykypri said, "it will do for me. No one cooks garlic here,
and there is no canary!"



CHAPTER VII


Neither Lord Tancred nor Francis Markrute was late at the appointment in
the city restaurant where they were to lunch, and they were soon seated
at a table in a corner where they could talk without being interrupted.
They spoke of ordinary things for a moment. Then Lord Tancred's
impatience to get at the matter which interested him became too great to
wait longer, so he said laconically:

"Well?"

"I saw her this morning and had a talk"--the financier said, as he
placed some caviare on his toast. "You must not overlook the fact, which
I have already stated to you, that she is a most difficult problem. You
will have an interesting time taming her. For a man of nerve, I cannot
imagine a more thrilling task. She is a woman who has restricted all her
emotion for men, and could lavish it all upon _the_ man, I imagine. In
any case that is 'up to you,' as our friends, the Americans, say--"

Lord Tancred thrilled as he answered:

"Yes, it shall be 'up to me.' But I want to find out all about her for
myself. I just want to know when I may see her, and what is the
programme?"

"The programme is that she will receive you this afternoon, about
tea-time, I should say; that you must explain to her you realize you are
engaged. You need not ask her to marry you; she will not care for
details like that--she knows it is already settled. Be as businesslike
as you can--and come away. She has made it a condition that she sees you
as little as possible until the wedding. The English idea of engaged
couples shocks her, for, remember, it is, on her side, not a love-match.
If you wish to have the slightest success with her afterwards be careful
_now_. She is going to Paris, immediately, for her trousseau. She will
return about a week before the wedding, when you can present her to your
family."

Tristram smiled grimly and then the two men's eyes met and they both
laughed.

"Jove! Francis!" Lord Tancred exclaimed, "isn't it a wonderful affair! A
real dramatic romance, here in the twentieth century. Would not every
one think I was mad, if they knew!"

"It is that sort of madmen who are often the sanest," Francis Markrute
answered. "The world is full of apparently sane fools." Then he passed
on to a further subject. "You will re-open Wrayth, of course," he said.
"I wish my niece to be a Queen of Society, and to have her whole life
arranged with due state. I wish your family to understand that I
appreciate the honor of the connection with them, and consider it a
privilege, and a perfectly natural thing--since we are foreigners of
whom you know nothing--that we should provide the necessary money for
what we wish."

Lord Tancred listened; he thought of his mother's similar argument at
breakfast.

"You see," the financier went on reflectively, "in life, the wise man
always pays willingly for what he really wants, as you are doing, for
instance, in your blind taking of my niece. Your old nobility in England
is the only one of any consequence left in the world. The other
countries' system of the titles descending to all the younger sons, _ad
infinitum_, makes the whole thing a farce after a while. A Prince in the
Caucasus is as common as a Colonel in Kentucky, and in Austria and
Germany there are poor Barons in the streets. There was a time in my
life when I could have had a foreign title, but I found it ridiculous,
and so refused it. But in England, in spite of your amusing radicalism
the real thing still counts. It is a valid asset--a tangible security
for one's money--from a business point of view. And Americans or
foreigners like myself and my niece, for instance, are securing
substantial property and equal return, when we bring large fortunes in
our marriage settlements to this country. What satisfaction comparable
to the glory of her English position as Marchioness of Darrowood could
Miss Clara D. Woggenheimer have got out of her millions, if she had
married one of her own countrymen, or an Italian count? Yet she gives
herself the airs of a benefactress to poor Darrowood and throws her
money in his teeth, whereas Darrowood is the benefactor, if there is a
case of it either way. But to me, a sensible business man, the bargain
is equal. You don't go to an art dealer's and buy a very valuable
Rembrandt for its marketable value, and then, afterwards, jibe at the
picture and reproach the art dealer. Money is no good without position,
and here in England you have had such hundreds of years of freedom from
invasion, that you have had time, which no other country has had, to
perfect your social system. Let the Radicals and the uninformed of other
lands rail as they will, your English aristocracy is the finest body of
thinkers and livers in the world. One hears ever of the black sheep, the
few luridly glaring failures, but never of the hundreds of great and
noble lives which are England's strength."

"By Jove!" said Lord Tancred, "you ought to be in the House of Lords,
Francis! You'd wake them up!"

The financier looked down at his plate; he always lowered his eyes when
he felt things. No one must ever read what was really passing in his
soul, and when he felt, it was the more difficult to conceal, he
reasoned.

"I am not a snob, my friend," he said, after a mouthful of salad. "I
have no worship for aristocracy in the abstract; I am a student, a
rather careful student of systems and their results, and, incidentally,
a breeder of thoroughbred live stock, too, which helps one's
conclusions: and above all I am an interested watcher of the progress of
evolution."

"You are abominably clever," said Lord Tancred.

"Think of your uncle, the Duke of Glastonbury," the financier went on.
"He fulfills his duties in every way, a munificent landlord, and a
sound, level-headed politician: what other country or class could
produce such as he?"

"Oh, the Duke's all right," his nephew agreed. "He is a bit hard up like
a number of us at times, but he keeps the thing going splendidly, and my
cousin Ethelrida helps him. She is a brick. But you know her, of course,
don't you think so?"

"The Lady Ethelrida seems to me a very perfect young woman," Francis
Markrute said, examining his claret through the light. "I wish I knew
her better. We have few occasions of meeting; she does not go out very
much into general society, as you know."

"Oh, I'll arrange that, if it would interest you. I thought you were
perfectly cynical about and even rather bored with women," Lord Tancred
said.

"I think I told you--was it only yesterday?--that I understood it might
be possible for a woman to count--I have not time for the ordinary
parrot-chatterers one meets. There are three classes of the species
female: those for the body, those for the brain, and those for both. The
last are dangerous. The other two merely occupy certain moods in man.
Fortunately for us the double combination is rare."

Lord Tancred longed to ask under which head Francis Markrute placed his
niece, but, of course, he restrained himself. He, personally, felt sure
she would be of the combination; that was her charm. Yes, as he thought
over things, that was the only really dangerous kind, and he had so
seldom met it! Then his imagination suddenly pictured Laura Highford
with her tiny mouth and pointed teeth. She had a showy little brain,
absolutely no heart, and the senses of a cat or a ferret. What part of
him had she appealed to? Well, thank God, that was over and done with,
and he was perfectly free to make his discoveries in regard to Zara, his
future wife!

"I tell you what, Francis," he said presently, after the conversation
had drifted from these topics and cigars and liqueurs had come, "I would
like my cousin Ethelrida to meet Countess Shulski pretty soon. I don't
know why, but I believe the two would get on."

"There is no use suggesting any meetings until my niece returns from
Paris," the financier said. "She will be in a different mood by then.
She had not, when she came to England, quite put off her mourning; she
will then have beautiful clothes, and be more acquiescent in every way.
Now she would be antagonistic. See her this afternoon and be sensible;
make up your mind to postpone things, until her return. And even then be
careful until she is your wife!"

Lord Tancred looked disappointed. "It is a long time," he said.

"Let me arrange to give a dinner at my house, at which perhaps the Duke
and Lady Ethelrida would honor me by being present, and your mother and
sisters and any other member of your family you wish, let us say, on the
night of my niece's return" (he drew a small calendar notebook from his
pocket). "That will be Wednesday, the 18th, and we will fix the wedding
for Wednesday the 25th, a week later. That gets you back from your
honeymoon on the 1st of November; you can stay with me that night, and
if your uncle is good enough to include me in the invitation to his
shoot we can all three go down to Montfitchet on the following day. Is
all this well? If so I will write it down."

"Perfectly well," agreed the prospective bridegroom--and having no
notebook or calendar, he scribbled the reminder for himself on his cuff.
Higgins, his superb valet, knew a good deal of his lordship's history
from his lordship's cuffs!

"I don't think I shall wait for tea-time, Francis," he said, when they
got out of the restaurant, into the hall. "I think I'll go now, and get
it over, if she will be in. Could I telephone and ask?"

He did so and received the reply from Turner that Countess Shulski was
at home, but could not receive his lordship until half-past four
o'clock.

"Damn!" said that gentleman as he put the receiver down, and Francis
Markrute turned away to hide his smile.

"You had better go and buy an engagement ring, hadn't you?" he said. "It
won't do to forget that."

"Good Lord, I had forgotten!" gasped Tristram.

"Well, I have lots of time to do it now, so I'll go to the family
jewelers, they are called old-fashioned, but the stones are so good."

So they said good-bye, the young man speeding westwards in a taxi, the
lion hunter's excitement thrilling in his veins.

The financier returned to his stately office and passed through his
obsequious rows of clerks to his inner sanctum. Then he lit another
cigar and gave orders that he was not to be disturbed for a quarter of
an hour. He reposed in a comfortable chair and allowed himself to dream.
All his plans were working; there must be no rush. Great emergencies
required rush, but to build to the summit of one's ambitions, one must
use calm and watchful care.



CHAPTER VIII


Countess Shulski was seated in her uncle's drawing-room when Lord
Tancred was announced.

It was rather a severe room, purely French, with very little furniture,
each piece a priceless work of art. There were no touches of feminine
influence, no comfortable sofas as in the morning-room or library, all
was stiff, and dignified, and in pure style.

She had chosen to receive him there, on purpose. She wished the meeting
to be short and cold. He came forward, a look of determination upon his
handsome face.

Zara rose as he advanced, and bowed to him. She did not offer to shake
hands, and he let his, which he had half outstretched, drop. She did not
help him at all; she remained perfectly silent, as usual. She did not
even look at him, but straight out of the window into the pouring rain,
and it was then he saw that her eyes were not black but slate.

"You understand why I have come, of course?" he said by way of a
beginning.

"Yes," she replied and said nothing more.

"I want to marry you, you know," he went on.

"Really!" she said.

"Yes, I do." And he set his teeth--certainly she was difficult!

"That is fortunate for you, since you are going to do so."

This was not encouraging; it was also unexpected.

"Yes, I am," he answered, "on the 25th of October, with your
permission."

"I have already consented." And she clasped her hands.

"May I sit down beside you and talk?" he asked.

She pointed to a Louis XVI. _bergère_ which stood opposite, and herself
took a small armchair at the other side of the fire.

So they sat down, she gazing into the blazing coals and he gazing at
her. She was facing the gloomy afternoon light, though she did not think
out these things like her uncle, so he had a clear and wonderful picture
of her. "How could so voluptuous looking a creature be so icily cold?"
he wondered. Her wonderful hair seemed burnished like dark copper, in
the double light of fire and day, and that gardenia skin looked fit to
eat. He was thrilled with a mad desire to kiss her; he had never felt so
strong an emotion towards a woman in his life.

"Your uncle tells me you are going away to-morrow, and that you will be
away until a week before our wedding. I wish you were not going to be,
but I suppose you must--for clothes and things."

"Yes, I must."

He got up; he could not sit still, he was too wildly excited; he stood
leaning on the mantelpiece, quite close to her, for a moment, his eyes
devouring her with the passionate admiration he felt. She glanced up,
and when she saw their expression her jet brows met, while a look of
infinite disgust crept over her face.

So it had come--so soon! He was just like all men--a hateful, sensual
beast. She knew he desired to kiss her--to kiss a person he did not
know! Her experience of life had not encouraged her to make the least
allowance for the instinct of man. For her, that whole side of human
beings was simply revolting. In the far back recesses of her mind she
knew and felt that caresses and such things might be good if one
loved--passionately loved--but in the abstract, just because of the
attraction of sex, they were hideous. No man had ever had the conceded
tip of her little finger, although she had been forced to submit to
unspeakable exhibitions of passion from Ladislaus, her husband.

For her, Tristram appeared a satyr, but she was no timid nymph, but a
fierce panther ready to defend herself!

He saw her look and drew back--cooled.

The thing was going to be much more difficult than he had even thought;
he must keep himself under complete control, he knew now. So he turned
away to the window and glanced out on the wet park.

"My mother called upon you to-day, I believe," he said. "I asked her not
to expect you to be at home. It was only to show you that my family will
welcome you with affection."

"It is very good of them."

"The announcement of the engagement will be in the _Morning Post_
to-morrow. Do you mind?"

"Why should I mind?" (her voice evinced surprise). "Since it is true,
the formalities must take place."

"It seems as if it could not be true. You are so frightfully frigid," he
said with faint resentment.

"I cannot help how I am," she said in a tone of extreme hauteur. "I have
consented to marry you. I will go through with all the necessary
ceremonies, the presentations to your family, and such affairs; but I
have nothing to say to you: why should we talk when once these things
are settled? You must accept me as I am, or leave me alone--that is
all"--and then her temper made her add, in spite of her uncle's warning,
"for I do not care!"

He turned now; he was a little angry and nearly flared up, but the sight
of her standing there, magnificently attractive, stopped him. This was
merely one of the phases of the game; he should not allow himself to be
worsted by such speeches.

"I expect you don't, but I do," he said. "I am quite willing to take you
as you are, or will be."

"Then that is all that need be said," she answered coldly. "Arrange with
my uncle when you wish me to see your family on my return; I will carry
out what he settles. And now I need not detain you, and will say
good-bye." And bowing to him she walked towards the door.

"I am sorry you feel you want to go so soon," he said, as he sprang
forward to open it for her, "but good-bye." And he let her pass without
shaking hands.

When he was alone in the room he realized that he had not given her the
engagement ring, which still reposed in his pocket!

He looked round for a writing table, and finding one, sat down and wrote
her a few words.

"I meant to give you this ring. If you don't like sapphires it can be
changed. Please wear it, and believe me to be

"Yours,

"Tancred."

He put the note with the little ring-case, inclosed both in a large
envelope, and then he rang the bell.

"Send this up to the Countess Shulski," he said to the footman who
presently came. "And is my motor at the door?"

It was, so he descended the stairs.

"To Glastonbury House," he ordered his chauffeur. Then he leaned back
against the cushions, no look of satisfaction upon his face.

Ethelrida might be having tea, and she was always so soothing and
sympathetic.

Yes, her ladyship was at home, and he was shown up into his cousin's own
sitting-room.

Lady Ethelrida Montfitchet had kept house for her father, the Duke of
Glastonbury, ever since she was sixteen when her mother had died, and
she acted as hostess at the ducal parties, with the greatest success.
She was about twenty-five now, and one of the sweetest of young women.

She was very tall, rather plain, and very distinguished.

Francis Markrute thought her beautiful. He was fond of analyzing types
and breeds, and he said there were those who looked as if they had been
poured into more or less fine or clumsy mould, and there were others who
were sharply carved as with a knife. He loved a woman's face to look
_ciselée_, he said. That is why he did not entirely admire his niece,
for although the mould was of the finest in her case, her small nose was
not chiseled. Numbers of English and some Austrians were chiseled, he
affirmed--showing their race--but very few of other nations.

Now some people would have said the Lady Ethelrida was too chiseled--she
might grow peaky, with old age. But no one could deny the extreme
refinement of the young woman.

She was strikingly fair, with silvery light hair that had no yellow in
it; and kind, wise, gray eyes. Her figure in its slenderness was a thing
which dressmakers adored; there was so little of it that any frock could
be made to look well on it.

Lady Ethelrida did everything with moderation. She was not mad about any
sport or any fad. She loved her father, her aunt, her cousins of the
Tancred family, and her friend, Lady Anningford. She was, in short, a
fine character and a great lady.

"I have come to tell you such a piece of news, Ethelrida," Tristram said
as he sat down beside her on the chintz-covered sofa. Ethelrida's tastes
in furniture and decorations were of the simplest in her own room.
"Guess what it is!"

"How can I, Tristram? Mary is really going to marry Lord Henry?"

"Not that I know of as yet, but I daresay she will, some day. No, guess
again; it is about a marriage."

She poured him out some tea and indicated the bread and butter.
Tristram, she knew, loved her stillroom maid's brown bread and butter.

"A man, or a woman?" she asked, meditatively.

"A man--ME!" he said, with reckless grammar.

"You, Tristram!" Ethelrida exclaimed, with as much excitement as she
ever permitted herself. "You going to be married! But to whom?"

The thing seemed too preposterous; and her mind had instantly flown to
the name, Laura Highford, before her reason said, "How ridiculous--she
is married already!"--so she repeated again: "But to whom?"

"I am going to be married to a widow, a niece of Francis Markrute's; you
know him." Lady Ethelrida nodded. "She is the most wonderfully
attractive creature you ever saw, Ethelrida, a type not like any one
else. You'll understand in a minute, when you see her. She has stormy
black eyes--no, they are not really black; they are slate color--and red
hair, and a white face, and, by Jove! a figure! And do you know, my dear
child, I believe I am awfully in love with her!"

"You only 'believe,' Tristram! That sounds odd to be going to be married
upon!" Lady Ethelrida could not help smiling.

He sipped his tea and then jumped up. He was singularly restless to-day.

"She is the kind of woman a man would go perfectly mad about when he
knew her well. I shall, I know." Then, as he saw his cousin's humorous
expression, he laughed boyishly. "It does sound odd, I admit," he said,
"the inference is that I don't know her well--and that is just it,
Ethelrida, but only to you would I say it. Look here, my dear girl, I
have got to be comforted this afternoon. She has just flattened me out.
We are going to be married on the 25th of October, and I want you to be
awfully nice to her. I am sure she has had a rottenly unhappy life."

"Of course I will, Tristram dear," said Lady Ethelrida, "but remember, I
am completely in the dark. When did you meet her? Can't you tell me
something more? Then I will be as sympathetic as you please."

So Lord Tancred sat down on the sofa beside her again, and told her the
bare facts: that it was rather sudden, but he was convinced it was what
he wanted most to do in life; that she was young and beautiful, rich,
and very reserved, and rather cold; that she was going away, until a
week before the wedding; that he knew it sounded all mad, but his dear
Ethelrida was to be a darling, and to understand and not reason with
him!

And she did not. She had gathered enough from this rather incoherent
recital to make her see that some very deep and unusual current must
have touched her cousin's life. She knew the Tancred character, so she
said all sorts of nice things to him, asked interested but not
indiscreet questions. And soon that irritated and baffled sense left
him, and he became calm.

"I want Uncle Glastonbury to ask Francis Markrute to the shoot on the
2nd of November, Ethelrida," he said, "and you will let me bring
Zara--she will be my wife by then--although I was asked only as a
bachelor?"

"It is my party, not Papa's, you dear old goose, you know that," Lady
Ethelrida said. "Of course you shall bring your Zara and I myself will
write and ask Mr. Markrute. In spite of Aunt Jane's saying that he is a
cynical foreigner I like him!"



CHAPTER IX


Society was absolutely flabbergasted when it read in the _Morning Post_
the announcement of Lord Tancred's engagement! No one had heard a word
about it. There had been talk of his going to Canada, and much chaff
upon that subject--so ridiculous, Tancred emigrating! But of a
prospective bride the most gossip-loving busybody at White's had never
heard! It fell like a bombshell. And Lady Highford, as she read the
news, clenched her pointed teeth, and gave a little squeal like a stoat.

So he had drifted beyond her, after all! He had often warned her he
would, at the finish of one of those scenes she was so fond of creating.
It was true then, when he had told her before Cowes that everything must
be over. She had thought his silence since had only been sulking! But
who was the creature? "Countess Shulski." Was it a Polish or Hungarian
name? "Daughter of the late Maurice Grey." Which Grey was that? "Niece
of Francis Markrute, Esquire, of Park Lane." Here was the reason--money!
How disgusting men were! They would sell their souls for money. But the
woman should suffer for this, and Tristram, too, if she could manage it!

Then she wept some tears of rage. He was so adorably good looking and
had been such a feather in her cap, although she had never been really
sure of him. It was a mercy her conduct had always been of such an
immaculate character--in public--no one could say a word. And now she
must act the dear, generous, congratulating friend.

So she had a dose of sal volatile and dressed, with extra care, to lunch
at Glastonbury House. There she might hear all the details; only
Ethelrida was so superior, and uninterested in news or gossip.

There was a party of only five assembled, when she arrived--she was
always a little late. The Duke and Lady Ethelrida, Constance Radcliffe,
and two men: an elderly politician, and another cousin of the family.
She could certainly chatter about Tristram, and hear all she could.

They were no sooner seated than she began:

"Is not this wonderful news about your nephew, Duke? No one expected it
of him just now, though I as one of his best friends have been urging
him to marry, for the last two years. Dear Lady Tancred must be so
enchanted."

"I am sure you gave him good counsel," said the Duke, screwing his
eyeglass which he wore on a long black ribbon into his whimsical old
blue eye. "But Tristram's a tender mouth, and a bit of a bolter--got to
ride him on the snaffle, not the curb."

Lady Highford looked down at her plate, while she gave an answer quite
at variance with her own methods.

"Snaffle or curb, no one would ever try to guide Lord Tancred! And what
is the charming lady like? You all know her, of course?"

"Why, no," said His Grace. "The uncle, Mr. Markrute, dined here the
other night. He's been very useful to the Party, in a quiet way and
seems a capital fellow--but Ethelrida and I have never met the niece. Of
course, no one has been in town since the season, and she was not here
then. We only came up, like you, for Flora's wedding, and go down
to-morrow."

"This is thrilling!" said Lady Highford. "An unknown bride! Have you not
even heard what she is like--young or old? A widow always sounds so
attractive!"

"I am told that she is perfectly beautiful," said Lady Ethelrida from
the other side of the table--there had been a pause--"and Tristram seems
so happy. She is quite young, and very rich."

She had always been amiably friendly and indifferent to Laura Highford.
It was Ethelrida's way to have no likes and dislikes for the general
circle of her friends; her warm attachment was given to so very few, and
the rest were just all of a band. Perhaps if she felt anything definite
it was a tinge on the side of dislike for Laura. Thinking to please
Tristram at the time she had asked her to this, her birthday party, when
they had met at Cowes in August, and now she was faced with the problem
how to put her off, since Tristram and his bride would be coming. She
saw the glint in the light hazel eyes as she described the fiancé and
her kind heart at once made her determine to turn the conversation.
After all, it was perfectly natural for poor Laura to have been in love
with Tristram--no one could be more attractive--and, of course, it must
hurt her--this marriage. She would reserve the "putting off," until they
left the dining-room and she could speak to her alone. So with her
perfect tact and easy grace she diverted the current of conversation to
the political situation, and luncheon went on.

But this was not what Lady Highford had come for. She wanted to hear
everything she could about her rival, in order to lay her plans; and the
moment Ethelrida was engaged with the politician and the Duke had
turned to Mrs. Radcliffe, she tackled the cousin, in a lower voice.

He, Jimmy Danvers, had only read what she had, that morning. He had seen
Tristram at the Turf on Tuesday after lunch--the day before
yesterday--and he had only talked of Canada--and not a word of a lady
then. It was a bolt from the blue. "And when I telephoned to the old boy
this morning," he said, "and asked him to take me to call upon his
damsel to-day, he told me she had gone to Paris and would not be back
until a week before the wedding!"

"How very mysterious!" piped Laura. "Tristram is off to Paris, too,
then, I suppose?"

"He did not say; he seemed in the deuce of a hurry and put the receiver
down."

"He is probably only doing it for money, poor darling boy!" she said
sympathetically. "It was quite necessary for him."

"Oh, that's not Tristram's measure," Sir James Danvers interrupted.
"He'd never do anything for money. I thought you knew him awfully well,"
he added, surprised. Apprehension of situations was not one of his
strong qualities.

"Of course I do!" Laura snapped out and then laughed. "But you men!
Money would tempt any of you!"

"You may bet your last farthing, Lady Highford, Tristram is in
love--crazy, if you ask me--he'd not have been so silent about it all
otherwise. The Canada affair was probably because she was playing the
poor old chap,--and now she's given in; and that, of course, is
chucked."

Money, as the motive, Lady Highford could have borne, but, to hear
about love drove her wild! Her little pink and white face with its
carefully arranged childish setting suddenly looked old and strained,
while her eyes grew yellow in the light.

"They won't be happy long, then!" she said. "Tristram could not be
faithful to any one."

"I don't think he's ever been in love before, so we can't judge," the
blundering cousin continued, now with malice prepense. "He's had lots of
little affairs, but they have only been 'come and go.'"

Lady Highford crumbled her bread and then turned to the Duke--there was
nothing further to be got out of this quarter. Finally luncheon came to
an end, and the three ladies went up to Ethelrida's sitting-room. Mrs.
Radcliffe presently took her leave to catch a train, so the two were
left alone.

"I am so looking forward to your party, dear Ethelrida," Lady Highford
cooed. "I am going back to Hampshire to-morrow, but at the end of the
month I come up again and will be with you in Norfolk on the 2nd."

"I was just wondering," said Lady Ethelrida, "if, after all, you would
not be bored, Laura? Your particular friends, the Sedgeworths, have had
to throw us over--his father being dead. It will be rather a family sort
of collection, and not so amusing this year, I am afraid. Em and Mary,
Tristram and his new bride,--and Mr. Markrute, the uncle--and the rest
as I told you."

"Why, my dear child, it sounds delightful! I shall long to meet the new
Lady Tancred! Tristram and I are such dear friends, poor darling boy! I
must write and tell him how delighted I am with the news. Do you know
where he is at the moment?"

"He is in London, I believe. Then you really will stick to us and not be
bored? How sweet of you!" Lady Ethelrida said without a change in her
level voice while her thoughts ran: "It is very plucky of Laura; or, she
has some plan! In any case I can't prevent her coming now, and perhaps
it is best to get it over. But I had better warn Tristram, surprises are
so unpleasant."

Then, after a good deal of gush about "dear Lady Tancred's" prospective
happiness in having a daughter-in-law, and "dear Tristram," Lady
Highford's motor was announced, and she went.

And when she had gone Lady Ethelrida sat down and wrote her cousin a
note. Just to tell him in case she did not see him before she went back
to the country to-morrow that her list, which she enclosed, was made up
for her November party, but if he would like any one else for his bride
to meet, he was to say so. She added that some friends had been to
luncheon, and among them Laura Highford, who had said the nicest things
and wished him every happiness.

Lady Ethelrida was not deceived about these wishes, but she could do no
more.

The Duke came into her room, just as she was finishing, and warmed
himself by her wood fire.

"The woman is a cat, Ethelrida," he said without any preamble. These two
understood each other so well, they often seemed to begin in the middle
of a sentence, of which no outsider could grasp the meaning.

"I am afraid she is, Papa. I have just been writing to Tristram, to let
him know she still insists upon coming to the shoot. She can't do
anything there, and they may as well get it over. She will have to be
civil to the new Lady Tancred in our house."

"Whew!" whistled the Duke, "you may have an exciting party. You had
better go and leave our cards to-day on the Countess Shulski, and
another of mine, as well, for the uncle. We'll have to swallow the whole
lot, I suppose."

"I rather like Mr. Markrute, Papa," Ethelrida said. "I talked to him the
other night for the first time; he is extremely intelligent. We ought
not to be so prejudiced, perhaps, just because he is a foreigner, and in
the City. I've asked him on the 2nd, too--you don't mind? I will leave
the note to-day; Tristram particularly wished it."

"Then we'll have to make the best of it, pet. I daresay you are right,
and one ought not to be prejudiced about anything, in these days."

And then he patted his daughter's smoothly brushed head, and went out
again.

Lady Ethelrida drove in the ducal carriage (the Duke insisted upon a
carriage, in London), to Park Lane, and was handing her cards to her
footman to leave, when Francis Markrute himself came out of the door.

His whole face changed; it seemed to grow younger. He was a fairly tall
man, and distinguished looking. He came forward and said: "How do you
do," through the brougham window.

Alas! his niece had left that morning _en route_ for Paris--_trousseaux_
and feminine business, but he was so delighted to have had this chance
of a few words with her--Lady Ethelrida.

"I was leaving a note to ask you to come and shoot with my father at
Montfitchet, Mr. Markrute," she said, "on the 2nd of November. Tristram
says he hopes they will be back from the honeymoon in time to join us,
too."

"I shall be delighted, and my niece will be delighted at your kindness
in calling so soon."

Then they said a few more polite things and the financier finished
by:--"I am taking the great liberty of having the book, which I told you
about, rebound--it was in such a tattered condition, I was ashamed to
send it to you--do not think I had forgotten. I hope you will accept
it?"

"I thought you only meant to lend it to me because it is out of print
and I cannot buy it. I am so sorry you have had this trouble," Lady
Ethelrida said, a little stiffly. "Bring it to the shoot. It will
interest me to see it but you must not give it to me." And then she
smiled graciously; and he allowed her to say good-bye, and drive on. And
as he turned into Grosvenor Street he mused,

"I like her exquisite pride; but she shall take the book--and many other
things--presently."

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile Zara Shulski had arrived at Bournemouth. She had started early
in the morning, and she was making a careful investigation of the house.
The doctor appeared all that was kind and clever, and his wife gentle
and sweet. Mirko could not have a nicer home, it seemed. Their little
girl was away at her grandmother's for the next six weeks, they said,
but would be enchanted to have a little boy companion. Everything was
arranged satisfactorily. Zara stayed the night, and next day, having
wired to Mimo to meet her at the station, she returned to London.

They talked in the Waterloo waiting-room; poor Mimo seemed so glad and
happy. He saw her and her small bag into a taxi. She was going back to
her uncle's, and was to take Mirko down next day, and, on the following
one, start for Paris.

"But I can't go back to Park Lane without seeing Mirko, now," she said.
"I did not tell my uncle what train I was returning by. There is plenty
of time so I will go and have tea with you at Neville Street. It will be
like old times, we will get some cakes and other things on the way, and
boil the kettle on the fire."

So Mimo gladly got in with her and they started. He had a new suit of
clothes and a new felt hat, and looked a wonderfully handsome foreign
gentleman; his manner to women was always courteous and gallant. Zara
smiled and looked almost happy, as they arranged the details of their
surprise tea party for Mirko.

At that moment there passed them in Whitehall a motorcar going very
fast, the occupant of which, a handsome young man, caught the most
fleeting glimpse of them--hardly enough to be certain he recognized
Zara. But it gave him a great start and a thrill.

"It cannot be she," he said to himself, "she went to Paris yesterday;
but if it is--who is the man?"

He altered his plans, went back to his rooms, and sat moodily down in
his favorite chair--an unpleasant, gnawing uncertainty in his heart.



CHAPTER X


Mirko, crouched up by the smoldering fire, was playing the _Chanson
Triste_ on his violin when the two reached the studio. He had a
wonderful talent--of that there was no doubt--but his health had always
been too delicate to stand any continuous study. Nor had the means of
the family ever been in a sufficiently prosperous condition, in later
years, to procure a really good master. But the touch and soul of the
strange little fellow sounded in every wailing note. He always played
the _Chanson Triste_ when he was sad and lonely. He had been nearly
seven when his mother died, and he remembered her vividly. She had so
loved Tschaikovsky's music, and this piece especially. He had played it
to her--from ear then--the afternoon she lay dying, and for him, as for
them all, it was indissolubly connected with her memory. The tears were
slowly trickling down Mirko's cheeks. He was going to be taken away from
his father, his much loved Chérisette would not be near him, and he
feared and hated strangers.

He felt he was talking to his mother with his bow. His mother who was in
heaven, with all the saints and angels. What could it be like up there?
It was perhaps a forest, such as Fontainebleau, only there were sure to
be numbers of birds which sang like the nightingales in the Borghese
Gardens--there would be no canaries! The sun always shone and _Maman_
would wear a beautiful dress of blue gauze with wings, and her lovely
hair, which was fair, not red like Chérisette's, would be all hanging
down. It surely was a very desirable place, and quite different from the
Neville Street lodging. Why could he not get there, out of the cold and
darkness? Chérisette had always taught him that God was so good and kind
to little boys who had crippled backs. He would ask God with all the
force of his music, to take him there to _Maman_.

The sound of the familiar air struck a chill note upon Mimo and Zara, as
they came up the stairs; it made them hasten their steps--they knew very
well what mood it meant with the child.

He was so far away, in his passionate dream-prayer, that he did not hear
them coming until they opened the door; and then he looked up, his
beautiful dark eyes all wet with tears which suddenly turned to joy when
he saw his sister.

"_Chérisette adorée_!" he cried, and was soon in her arms, soothed and
comforted and caressed. Oh, if he could always be with her, he really,
after all, would wish for no other heaven!

"We are going to have such a picnic!" Zara told him. "Papa and I have
brought a new tablecloth, and some pretty cups and saucers, and spoons,
and knives, and forks--and see! such buns! English buns for you to
toast, Mirko mio! You must be the little cook, while I lay the table."

And the child clapped his hands with glee and helped to take the papers
off; he stroked the pretty roses on the china with his delicate, little
forefinger--he had Mimo's caressing ways with everything he admired and
loved. He had never broken his toys, as other children do; accidental
catastrophes to them had always caused him pain and weeping. And these
bright, new flowery cups should be his special care, to wash, and dry,
and guard.

He grew merry as a cricket, and his laughter pealed over the paper cap
Mimo made for him and the towel his sister had for an apron. They were
to be the servants, and Mimo a lordly guest.

And soon the table was laid, and the buns toasted and buttered; Zara had
even bought a vase of the same china, in which she placed a bunch of
autumn red roses, to match those painted on it and this was a particular
joy.

"The Apache," which had not yet found a purchaser, stood on one easel,
and from it the traveling rug hung to the other, concealing all
unsightly things, and yesterday Mimo had bought from the Tottenham Court
Road a cheap basket armchair with bright cretonne cushions. And really,
with the flowers and the blazing fire when they sat down to tea it all
looked very cozy and home-like.

What would her uncle or Lord Tancred have thought, could they have seen
those tempestuous eyes of Zara's glistening and tender--and soft as a
dove's!

After tea she sat in the basket chair, and took Mirko in her arms, and
told him all about the delightful, new home he was going to, the kind
lady, and the beautiful view of the sea he would get from his bedroom
windows; how pretty and fresh it all looked, how there were pine woods
to walk in, and how she would--presently--come down to see him. And as
she said this her thoughts flew to her own fate--what would her
"presently" be? And she gave a little, unconscious shiver almost of
fear.

"What hast thou, Chérisette?" said Mirko. "Where were thy thoughts
then?--not here?"

"No, not here, little one. Thy Chérisette is going also to a new home;
some day thou must visit her there."

But when he questioned and implored her to tell him about it she
answered vaguely, and tried to divert his thoughts, until he said:

"It is not to _Maman_ in heaven, is it, dear Chérisette? Because there,
there would be enough place for us both--and surely thou couldst take me
too?"

       *       *       *       *       *

When she got back to Park Lane, and entered her uncle's library he was
sitting at the writing table, the telephone in his hand. He welcomed her
with his eyes and went on speaking, while she took a chair.

"Yes, do come and dine.--May you see her if by chance she did not go to
Paris?" He looked up at Zara, who frowned. "No--she is very tired and
has gone to her room for the evening.--She has been in the country
to-day, seeing some friends.--No--not to-morrow--she goes to the country
again, and to Paris the following night--To the station? I will ask her,
but perhaps she is like me, and dislikes being seen off," then a
laugh,--and then, "All right--well, come and dine at eight--good-bye."
The financier put the receiver down and looked at his niece, a whimsical
smile in his eyes.

"Well," he said, "your fiancé is very anxious to see you, it seems. What
do you say?"

"Certainly not!" she flashed. "I thought it was understood; he shall not
come to the train. I will go by another if he insists."

"He won't insist; tell me of your day?"

She calmed herself--her face had grown stormy.

"I am quite satisfied with the home you have chosen for Mirko and will
take him there to-morrow. All the clothes have come that you said I
might order for him, and I hope and think he will be comfortable and
happy. He has a very beautiful, tender nature, and a great talent. If he
could only grow strong, and more balanced! Perhaps he will, in this
calm, English air."

Francis Markrute's face changed, as it always did with the mention and
discussion of Mirko--whose presence in the world was an ever-rankling
proof of his loved sister's disgrace. All his sense of justice--and he
was in general a just man--could never reconcile him to the idea of ever
seeing or recognizing the child. "The sins of the fathers"--was his
creed and he never forgot the dying Emperor's words. He had lost sight
of his niece for nearly two years after his sister's death. She had
wished for no communication with him, believing then that he had left
her mother to die without forgiveness, and it was not until he happened
to read in a foreign paper the casual mention of Count Shulski's murder,
and so guessed at Zara's whereabouts, that a correspondence had been
opened again, and he was able to explain that he had been absent in
Africa and had not received any letters.

He then offered her his protection and a home, if she would sever all
connection with the two, Mimo and Mirko, and she had indignantly
refused. And it was only when they were in dire poverty, and he had
again written asking his niece to come and stay with him for a few
weeks, this time with no conditions attached, that she had consented,
thinking that perhaps she would be able in some way to benefit them.

But now that she looked at him she felt keenly how he had trapped her,
all the same.

"We will not discuss your brother's nature," he said, coldly. "I will
keep my side of the bargain scrupulously, for all material things; that
is all you can expect of me. Now let us talk of yourself. I have
ventured to send some sables for your inspection up to your sitting room;
it will be cold traveling. I hope you will select what you wish. And
remember, I desire you to order the most complete trousseau in Paris,
everything that a great lady could possibly want for visits and
entertainments; and you must secure a good maid there, and return with
all the _apanages_ of your position."

She bowed, as at the reception of an order. She did not thank him.

"I will not give you any advice what to get," he went on. "Your own
admirable taste will direct you. I understand that in the days of your
late husband you were a beautifully dressed woman, so you will know all
the best places to go to. But please to remember, while I give you
unlimited resources for you to do what I wish, I trust to your honor
that you will bestow none of them upon the--man Sykypri. The bargain is
about the child; the father is barred from it in every way."

Zara did not answer, she had guessed this, but Mirko's welfare was of
first importance. With strict economy Mimo could live upon what he
possessed, if alone and if he chose to curtail his irresponsible
generosities.

"Do I understand I have your word of honor about this?" her uncle
demanded.

Her empress' air showed plainly now. She arose from the chair and stood
haughtily drawn up:

"You know me and whether my spoken word 'is required or no," she said,
"but if it will be any satisfaction to you to have it I give it!"

"Good--Then things are settled, and, I hope, to the happiness of all
parties."

"Happiness!" she answered bitterly. "Who is ever happy?" Then she turned
to go, but he arrested her.

"In two or three years' time you will admit to me that you know of four
human beings who are ideally happy." And with this enigmatic
announcement ringing in her ears, she went on up the stairs to her
sitting-room.

Who were the _four_ people? Herself and himself and Mimo and Mirko? Was
it possible that after all his hardness towards them he meant to be
eventually kind? Or was the fourth person not Mimo, but her future
husband? Then she smiled grimly. It was not very likely _he_ would be
happy--a beast, like the rest of men, who, marrying her only for her
uncle's money, having been ready to marry her for that when he had never
even seen her--was yet full enough of the revolting quality of his sex
to be desirous now to kiss her and clasp her in his arms!

As far as she was concerned he would have no happiness!

And she herself--what would the new life mean? It appeared a blank--an
abyss. A dark curtain seemed to overhang and cover it. All she could
feel was that Mirko was being cared for, that she was keeping her word
to her adored mother. She would fulfill to the letter her uncle's wishes
as to her suitable equipments, but beyond that she refused to think.

All the evening, when she had finished her short, solitary dinner, she
played the piano in her sitting-room, her white fingers passing from one
divine air to another, until at last she unconsciously drifted to the
_Chanson Triste_, and Mirko's words came back to her:

"There, there would be enough place for us both"--Who knows--that might
be the end of it!

And the two men heard the distant wail of the last notes as they came
out of the dining-room, and, while it made the financier uncomfortable,
it caused Tristram a sharp stab of pain.



CHAPTER XI


The next three weeks passed for Lord Tancred in continuously growing
excitement. He had much business to see to for the reopening of Wrayth
which had been closed for the past two years. He had decided to let Zara
choose her own rooms, and decorate them as she pleased, when she should
get there. But the big state apartments, with their tapestry and
pictures, would remain untouched.

It gave him infinite pleasure--the thought of living at his old house
once again--and it touched him to see the joy of the village and all the
old keepers and gardeners who had been pensioned off! He found himself
wondering all sorts of things--if he would have a son some day soon, to
inherit it all. Each wood and broad meadow seemed to take on new
interest and significance from this thought.

His home was so very dear to him though he had drilled himself into a
seeming indifference. The great, round tower of the original Norman keep
was still there, connected with the walls of the later house, a large,
wandering edifice built at all periods from that epoch upwards, and
culminating in a shocking early-Victorian Gothic wing and porch.

"I think we shall pull that wretched bit down some time," he said to
himself. "Zara must have good taste--she could not look so well in her
clothes, if she had not."

His thoughts were continually for her, and what she would be likely to
wish; and, in the evening, when he sat alone in his own sanctum after a
hard day with electricians and work-people, he would gaze into the
blazing logs and dream.

The new electric light was not installed yet, and only the big, old
lamps lit the shadowy oak panelling. There in a niche beside the
fireplace was the suit of armor which another Tristram Guiscard had worn
at Agincourt. What little chaps they had been in those days in
comparison with himself and his six feet two inches! But they had been
great lords, his ancestors, and he, too, would be worthy of the race.
There were no wars just now to go to and fight for his country--but he
would fight for his order, with his uncle, the Duke, that splendid, old
specimen of the hereditary legislator. Francis Markrute who was a good
judge had said that he had made some decent speeches in the House of
Lords already, and he would go on and do his best, and Zara would help
him. He wondered if she liked reading and poetry. He was such a
magnificently healthy sportsman he had always been a little shy of
letting people know his inner and gentler tastes. He hoped so much she
would care for the books he did. There was a deep strain of romance in
his nature, undreamed of by such women as Laura Highford, and these
evenings--alone, musing and growing in love with a phantom--drew it
forth.

His plan was to go to Paris--to the Ritz--for the honeymoon. Zara who
did not know England would probably hate the solemn servants staring at
her in those early days if he took her to Orton, one of the Duke's
places which he had offered him for the blissful week. Paris was much
better--they could go to the theater there--because he knew it would not
all be plain sailing by any means! And every time he thought of that
aspect, his keen, blue eyes sparkled with the instinct of the chase and
he looked the image of the Baron Tancred who, carved in stone, with his
Crusader's crossed feet, reposed in state in the church of Wrayth.

A lissom, wiry, splendid English aristocrat, in perfect condition and
health, was Tristram Guiscard, twenty-fourth Baron Tancred, as he
lounged in his chair before the fire and dreamed of his lady and his
fate.

And when they were used to one another--at the end of the week--there
would be the party at Montfitchet where he would have the joy and pride
of showing his beautiful wife--and Laura would be there;--he suddenly
thought of her. Poor old Laura! she had been awfully nice about it and
had written him the sweetest letter. He would not have believed her
capable of it--and he felt so kindly disposed towards her--little as she
deserved it if he had only known!

Then when these gayeties were over, he and Zara would come here to
Wrayth! And he could not help picturing how he would make love to her in
this romantic setting; and perhaps soon she, too, would love him. When
he got thus far in his picturings he would shut his eyes, stretch out
his long limbs, and call to Jake, his solemn bulldog, and pat his
wrinkled head.

And Zara, in Paris, was more tranquil in mind than was her wont. Mirko
had not made much difficulty about going to Bournemouth. Everything was
so pretty, the day she took him there, the sun shining gayly and the sea
almost as blue as the Mediterranean, and Mrs. Morley, the doctor's wife,
had been so gentle and sweet, and had drawn him to her heart at once,
and petted him, and talked of his violin. The doctor had examined his
lungs and said they certainly might improve with plenty of the fine air
if he were very carefully fed and tended, and not allowed to catch cold.

The parting with poor Mimo had been very moving. They had said good-bye
to him in the Neville Street lodging, as Zara thought it was wiser not
to risk a scene at the station. The father and son had kissed and
clasped one another and both wept, and Mimo had promised to come to see
him soon, soon!

Then there had been another painful wrench when she herself left
Bournemouth. She had put off her departure until the afternoon of the
following day. Mirko had tried to be as brave as he could; but the
memory of the pathetic little figure, as she saw it waving a hand to her
from the window, made those rare tears brim up and splash on her glove,
as she sat in the train.

In her short life with its many moments of deep anguish she had seldom
been able to cry; there were always others to be thought of first, and
an iron self-control was one of her inheritances from her grandfather,
the Emperor, just as that voluptuous, undulating grace, and the red,
lustrous hair, came from the beautiful opera dancer and great artiste,
her grandmother.

She had cautioned Mrs. Morley, if she should often hear Mirko playing
the _Chanson Triste_, to let her know, and she would come to him. It was
a sure indication of his state of mind. And Mrs. Morley, who had read in
the _Morning Post_ the announcement of her approaching marriage, asked
her where she could be found, and Zara had stiffened suddenly and
said--at her uncle's house in Park Lane, the letters to be marked "To be
forwarded immediately."

And when she had gone, Mrs. Morley had told her sister who had come in
to tea how beautiful Countess Shulski was and how very regal looking,
"but she had on such plain, almost shabby, black clothes, Minnie dear,
and a small black toque, and then the most splendid sable wrap--those
very grand people do have funny tastes, don't they? I should have liked
a pretty autumn costume of green velveteen, and a hat with a wing or a
bird."

The financier had insisted upon his niece wearing the sable wrap--and
somehow, in spite of all things, the beautiful, dark, soft fur had given
her pleasure.

And now, three weeks later, she was just returning from Paris, her
beauty enriched by all that money and taste could procure. It was the
eighteenth of October, exactly a week before her wedding.

She had written to Mimo from Paris, and told him she was going to be
married; that she was doing so because she thought it was best for them
all; and he had written back enchanted exclamations of surprise and joy,
and had told her she should have his new picture, the London fog--so
dramatic with its two meeting figures--for his wedding gift. Poor Mimo,
so generous, always, with all he had!

Mirko was not to be told until she was actually married.

She had written to her uncle and asked him as a great favor that she
might only arrive the very day of the family dinner party, he could
plead for her excess of trousseau business, or what he liked. She would
come by the nine o'clock morning train, so as to be in ample time for
dinner; and it would be so much easier for every one, if they could get
the meeting over, the whole family together, rather than have the ordeal
of private presentations.

And Francis Markrute had agreed, while Lord Tancred had chafed.

"I _shall_ meet her at the station, whatever you say, Francis!" he had
exclaimed. "I am longing to see her."

And as the train drew up at Victoria, Zara caught sight of him there on
the platform, and in spite of her dislike and resentment she could not
help seeing that her fiancé was a wonderfully good-looking man.

She herself appeared to him as the loveliest thing he had ever seen in
his life, with her perfect Paris clothes, and air of distinction. If he
had thought her attractive before he felt ecstatic in his admiration
now.

Francis Markrute hurried up the platform and Tristram frowned, but the
financier knew it might not be safe to leave them to a tête-à-tête drive
to the house! Zara's temper might not brook it, and he had rushed back
from the city, though he hated rushing, in order to be on the spot to
make a third.

"Welcome, my niece!" he said, before Lord Tancred could speak. "You see,
we have both come to greet you."

She thanked them politely, and turned to give an order to her new French
maid--and some of the expectant, boyish joy died out of Tristram's face,
as he walked beside her to the waiting motor.

They said the usual things about the crossing--it had been smooth and
pleasant--so fortunate for that time of the year--and she had stayed on
deck and enjoyed it. Yes, Paris had been charming; it was always a
delightful spot to find oneself in.

Then Tristram said he was glad she thought that, because, if she would
consent, he would arrange to go there for the honeymoon directly after
the wedding. She inclined her head in acquiescence but did not speak.
The matter appeared one of complete indifference to her.

In spite of his knowledge that this would be her attitude and he need
not expect anything different Tristram's heart began to sink down into
his boots, by the time they reached the house, and Francis Markrute
whispered to his niece as they came up the steps:

"I beg of you to be a little more gracious--the man has some spirit, you
know!"

So when they got into the library, and she began to pour out the tea for
them, she made conversation. But Tristram's teeth were set, and a steely
light began to grow in his blue eyes.

She looked so astonishingly alluring there in her well-fitting, blue
serge, traveling dress, yet he might not even kiss her white, slender
hand! And there was a whole week before the wedding! And after
it?--would she keep up this icy barrier between them? If so--but he
refused to think of it!

He noticed that she wore his engagement ring only, on her left hand, and
that the right one was ringless, nor had she a brooch or any other
jewel. He felt glad--he would be able to give her everything. His mother
had been so splendid about the family jewels, insisting upon handing
them over, and even in the short time one or two pieces had been reset,
the better to please the presumably modern taste of the new bride of the
Tancreds. These, and the wonderful pearls, her uncle's gift, were
waiting for her, up in her sitting-room.

"I think I will go and rest now until dinner," she said, and forced a
smile as she moved towards the door.

It was the first time Tristram had ever seen her smile, and it thrilled
him. He had the most frantic longing to take her in his arms and kiss
her, and tell her he was madly in love with her, and wanted her never to
be out of his sight.

But he let her pass out, and, turning round, he found Francis Markrute
pouring out some liqueur brandy from a wonderful, old, gold-chased
bottle, which stood on a side-table with its glasses. He filled two, and
handed one to Tristram, while he quoted Doctor Johnson with an
understanding smile:

"'Claret for boys, port for men, but brandy for heroes!' By Jove! my
dear boy," he said, "you are a hero!"



CHAPTER XII


Lady Tancred unfortunately had one of her very bad headaches, and an
hour before dinner, in fact before her son had left the Park Lane house,
a telephone message came to say she was dreadfully sorry, it would be
impossible for her to come. It was Emily who spoke to Francis Markrute,
himself.

"Mother is so disappointed," she said, "but she really suffers so
dreadfully. I am sure Countess Shulski will forgive her, and you, too.
She wants to know if Countess Shulski will let Tristram bring her
to-morrow morning, without any more ceremony, to see her and stay to
luncheon."

Thus it was settled and this necessitated a change in the table
arrangements.

Lady Ethelrida would now sit on the host's right hand, and Lady
Coltshurst, an aunt on the Tancred side, at his left, while Zara would
be between the Duke and her fiancé, as originally arranged. Emily
Guiscard would have Sir James Danvers and Lord Coltshurst as neighbors,
and Mary her uncle, the Duke's brother, a widower, Lord Charles
Montfitchet, and his son, "Young Billy," the Glastonbury heir--Lady
Ethelrida was the Duke's only child.

At a quarter before eight Francis Markrute went up to his niece's
sitting-room. She was already dressed in a sapphire-blue velvet
masterpiece of simplicity. The Tancred presents of sapphires and
diamonds lay in their open cases on the table with the splendid
Markrute yards of pearls. She was standing looking down at them, the
strangest expression of cynical resignation upon her face.

"Your gift is magnificent, Uncle Francis," she said, without thanking
him. "Which do you wish me to wear? Yours--or his?"

"Lord Tancred's, he has specially asked that you put his on to-night,"
the financier replied. "These are only his first small ones; the other
jewels are being reset for you. Nothing can be kinder or more generous
than the whole family has been. You see this brooch, with the large drop
sapphire and diamond, is from the Duke."

She inclined her head without enthusiasm, and took her own small pearls
from her ears, and replaced them by the big sapphire and diamond
earrings; a rivière of alternate solitaire sapphires and diamonds she
clasped round her snowy throat.

"You look absolutely beautiful," her uncle exclaimed with admiration. "I
knew I could perfectly trust to your taste--the dress is perfection."

"Then I suppose we shall have to go down," she said quietly.

She was perfectly calm, her face expressionless; if there was a
tempestuous suggestion in her somber eyes she generally kept the lids
lowered. Inwardly, she felt a raging rebellion. This was the first
ceremony of the sacrifice, and although in the abstract her fine senses
appreciated the jewels and all her new and beautiful clothes and
_apanages_, they in no way counterbalanced the hateful degradation.

To her it was a hideous mockery--the whole thing; she was just a
chattel, a part of a business bargain. She could not guess her uncle's
motive for the transaction (he had a deep one, of course), but Lord
Tancred's was plain and purely contemptible. Money! For had not the
whole degrading thing been settled before he had ever seen her? He was
worse than Ladislaus who, at all events, had been passionately in love,
in his revolting, animal way.

She knew nothing of the English customs, nor how such a thing as the
arrangement of this marriage, as she thought it was, was a perfectly
unknown impossibility, as an idea. She supposed that the entire family
were aware of the circumstances, and were willing to accept her only for
her uncle's wealth--she already hated and despised them all. Her idea
was, "_noblesse oblige_," and that a great and ancient house should
never stoop to such depths.

Francis Markrute looked at her when she said, "I suppose we shall have
to go down," with that icy calm. He felt faintly uneasy.

"Zara, it is understood you will be gracious? and _brusquer_ no one?"

But all the reply he received was a glance of scorn. She had given her
word and refused to discuss that matter.

And so they descended the stairs just in time to be standing ready to
receive Lord and Lady Coltshurst who were the first to be announced. He
was a spare, unintelligent, henpecked, elderly man, and she, a stout,
forbidding-looking lady. She had prominent, shortsighted eyes, and she
used longhandled glasses; she had also three chins, and did not resemble
the Guiscards in any way, except for her mouth and her haughty bearing.

Zara's manner was that of an empress graciously receiving foreigners in
a private audience!

The guests now arrived in quick succession. Lord Charles and his son,
"Young Billy," then Tristram and his sisters, and Jimmy Danvers, and,
lastly, the Duke and Lady Ethelrida.

They were all such citizens of the world there was no awkwardness, and
the old Duke had kissed his fair, prospective niece's hand when he had
been presented, and had said that some day he should claim the privilege
of an old man and kiss her cheek. And Zara had smiled for an instant,
overcome by his charm, and so she had put her fingers on his arm, and
they had gone down to dinner; and now they were talking suavely.

Francis Markrute had a theory that certain human beings are born with
moral antennae--a sort of extra combination beyond the natural of the
senses of sight, smell, hearing and understanding--which made them
apprehend situations and people even when these chanced to be of a
hitherto unknown race or habit. Zara was among those whose antennae were
highly developed. She had apprehended almost instantaneously that
whatever their motives were underneath, her future husband's family were
going to act the part of receiving her for herself. It was a little
ridiculous, but very well bred, and she must fall in with it when with
them collectively like this.

Before they had finished the soup the Duke was saying to himself that
she was the most attractive creature he had ever met in his life, and no
wonder Tristram was mad about her; for Tristram's passionate admiration
to-night could not have been mistaken by a child!

And yet Zara had never smiled, but that once--in the drawing-room.

Lady Ethelrida from where she sat could see her face through a gap in
the flowers. The financier had ordered a tall arrangement on purpose:
if Zara by chance should look haughtily indifferent it were better that
her expression should escape the observation of all but her nearest
neighbors. However, Lady Ethelrida just caught the picture of her
through an oblique angle, against a background of French panelling.

And with her quiet, calm judgment of people she was wondering what was
the cause of that strange look in her eyes? Was it of a stag at bay? Was
it temper, or resentment, or only just pain? And Tristram had said their
color was slate gray; for her part she saw nothing but pools of jet ink!

"There is some tragic story hidden here," she thought, "and Tristram is
too much in love to see it." But she felt rather drawn to her new
prospective cousin, all the same.

Francis Markrute seemed perfectly happy--his manner as a host left
nothing to be desired; he did not neglect the uninteresting aunt, who
formed golden opinions of him; but he contrived to make Lady Ethelrida
feel that he wished only to talk to her; not because she was an
attractive, young woman, but because he was impressed with her
intelligence, in the abstract. It made things very easy.

The Duke asked Zara if she knew anything about English politics.

"You will have to keep Tristram up to the mark," he said, "he has done
very well now and then, but he is a rather lazy fellow." And he smiled.

"'Tristram,'" she thought. "So his name is 'Tristram'!" She had actually
never heard it before, nor troubled herself to inquire about it. It
seemed incredible, it aroused in her a grim sense of humor, and she
looked into the old Duke's face for a second and wondered what he would
say if she announced this fact, and he caught the smile, cynical though
it was, and continued:

"I see you have noticed his laziness! Now it will really be your duty to
make him a first-rate fighter for our cause. The Radicals will begin to
attack our very existence presently, and we must all come up to the
scratch."

"I know nothing as yet of your politics," Zara said. "I do not
understand which party is which, though my uncle says one consists of
gentlemen, and the other of the common people. I suppose it is like in
other countries, every one wanting to secure what some one above him has
got, without being fitted for the administration of what he desires to
snatch."

"That is about it," smiled the Duke.

"It would be reasonable, if they were all oppressed here, as in France
before the great revolution, but are they?"

"Oh! dear, no!" interrupted Tristram. "All the laws are made for the
lower classes. They have compensations for everything, and they have
openings to rise to the top of the tree if they wish to. It is wretched
landlords like my uncle and myself who are oppressed!" and he smiled
delightedly, he was so happy to hear her talk.

"When I shall know I shall perhaps find it all interesting," she
continued to the Duke.

"Between us we shall have to instruct you thoroughly, eh, Tristram, my
boy? And then you must be a great leader, and have a salon, as the
ladies of the eighteenth century did: we want a beautiful young woman to
draw us all together."

"Well, don't you think I have found you a perfect specimen, Uncle!"
Tristram exclaimed; and he raised his glass and kissed the brim, while
he whispered:

"Darling, my sweet lady--I drink to your health."

But this was too much for Zara--he was overdoing the part--and she
turned and flashed upon him a glance of resentment and contempt.

Beyond the Duke sat Jimmy Danvers, and then Emily Guiscard and Lord
Coltshurst, and the two young people exchanged confidences in a low
voice.

"I say, Emily, isn't she a corker?" Sir James said. "She don't look a
bit English, though, she reminds me of a--oh, well, I'm not good at
history or dates, but some one in the old Florentine time. She looks as
if she could put a dagger into one or give a fellow a cup of poison,
without turning a hair."

"Oh, Jimmy! how horrid," exclaimed Emily. "She does not seem to me to
have a cruel face, she only looks peculiar and mysterious,
and--and--unsmiling. Do you think she loves Tristram? Perhaps that is
the foreign way--to appear so cold."

At that moment Sir James Danvers caught the glance which Zara gave her
fiancé for his toast.

"Je-hoshaphat!" he exclaimed! But he realized that Emily had not seen,
so he stopped abruptly.

"Yes--one can never be sure of things with foreigners," he said, and he
looked down at his plate. That poor devil of a Tristram was going to
have a thorny time in the future, he thought, and he was to be best man
at the wedding; it would be like giving the old chap over to a tigress!
But, by Jove!--such a beautiful one would be worth being eaten by--he
added to himself.

And during one of Francis Markrute's turnings to his left-hand neighbor
Lord Coltshurst said to Lady Ethelrida:

"I think Tristram's choice peculiarly felicitous, Ethelrida, do not you?
But I fear her ladyship"--and he glanced timidly at his wife--"will not
take this view. She has a most unreasonable dislike for young women with
red hair. 'Ungovernable temperaments,' she affirms. I trust she won't
prejudice your Aunt Jane."

"Aunt Jane always thinks for herself," said Lady Ethelrida. She
announced no personal opinion about Tristram's fiancé, nor could Lord
Coltshurst extort one from her.

As the dinner went on she felt a growing sense that they were all on the
edge of a volcano.

Lady Ethelrida never meddled in other people's affairs, but she loved
Tristram as a brother and she felt a little afraid. She could not see
his face, from where she sat--the table was a long one with oval
ends--but she, too, had seen the flash from Zara which had caused Jimmy
Danvers to exclaim: "Jehoshaphat!"

The host soon turned back from duty to pleasure, leaving Lady Coltshurst
to Lord Charles Montfitchet. The conversation turned upon types.

Types were not things of chance, Francis Markrute affirmed; if one could
look back far enough there was always a reason for them.

"People are so extremely unthinking about such a number of interesting
things, Lady Ethelrida," he said, "their speculative faculties seem only
to be able to roam into cut and dried channels. We have had great
scientists like Darwin investigating our origin, and among the Germans
there are several who study the atavism of races, but in general even
educated people are perfectly ignorant upon the subject, and they expect
little Tommy Jones and Katie Robinson, or Jacques Dubois and Marie
Blanc, to have the same instincts as your cousin, Lord Tancred, and you,
for instance. Whatever individual you are dealing with, you should
endeavor to understand his original group. In moments of great
excitement when all acquired control is in abeyance the individual
always returns to the natural action of his group."

"How interesting!" said Lady Ethelrida. "Let us look round the table and
decide to what particular group each one of us belongs."

"Most of you are from the same group," he said meditatively.
"Eliminating myself and my niece, Sir James Danvers has perhaps had the
most intermixtures."

"Yes," said Lady Ethelrida, and she laughed. "Jimmy's grandmother was
the daughter of a very rich Manchester cotton spinner; that is what
gives him his sound common sense. I am afraid Tristram and the rest of
us except Lord Coltshurst have not had anything sensible like that in us
for hundreds of years, so what would be your speculation as to the
action of our group?"

"That you would have high courage and fine senses, and highly-strung,
nervous force, and chivalry and good taste, and broad and noble aims in
the higher half and that in the lower portion you would run to the
decadence of all those things--the fine turned to vices--yet even so I
would not look for vulgarity, or bad taste, or cowardice in any of you."

"No," said Lady Ethelrida--"I hope not. Then, according to your
reasoning it is very unjust of us when we say, as perhaps you have heard
it said, that Lady Darrowood is to blame when she is noisy and
assertive and treats Lord Darrowood with bad taste?"

"Certainly--she only does those things when she is excited and has gone
back to her group. When she is under her proper control she plays the
part of an English marchioness very well. It is the prerogative of a new
race to be able to play a part; the result of the cunning and strength
which have been required of the immediate forbears in order to live at
all under unfavorable conditions. Now, had her father been a Deptford
ox-slaughterer instead of a Chicago pig-sticker she could never have
risen to the role of a marchioness at all. This is no new country; it
does not need nor comprehend bluff, and so produces no such type as Lady
Darrowood."

At this moment Lady Ethelrida again caught sight of Zara. She was silent
at the instant, and a look of superb pride and disdain was on her face.
Almost before she was aware of it Ethelrida had exclaimed:

"Your niece looks like an empress, a wonderful, Byzantine, Roman
empress!"

Francis Markrute glanced at her, sideways, with his clever eyes; had she
ever heard anything of Zara's parentage, he wondered for a second, and
then he smiled at himself for the thought. Lady Ethelrida was not likely
to have spoken so in that case--she would not be acting up to her group.

"There are certain reasons why she should," he said. "I cannot answer
for the part of her which comes from her father, Maurice Grey, a very
old English family, I believe, but on her mother's side she could have
the passions of an artist and the pride of a Caesar: she is a very
interesting case."

"May I know something of her?" Ethelrida said, "I do so want them to be
happy. Tristram is one of the simplest and finest characters I have ever
met. He will love her very much, I fear."

"Why do you say you _fear?_"

Lady Ethelrida reddened a little; a soft, warm flush came into her
delicate face and made it look beautiful: she never spoke of love--to
men.

"Because a great love is a very powerful and sometimes a terrible thing,
if it is not returned in like measure. And, oh, forgive me for saying
so, but the Countess Shulski does not look as if--she loved
Tristram--much."

Francis Markrute did not speak for an instant, then he turned and gazed
straight into her eyes gravely, as he said:

"Believe me, I would not allow your cousin to marry my niece if I were
not truly convinced that it will be for the eventual great happiness of
them both. Will you promise me something, Lady Ethelrida? Will you help
me not to permit any one to interfere between them for some time, no
matter how things may appear? Give them the chance of settling
everything themselves."

Ethelrida looked back at him, with a seriousness equal to his own as she
answered, "I promise." And inwardly the sense of some unknown
undercurrent that might grow into a rushing torrent made itself felt,
stronger than before.

Meanwhile Lady Coltshurst, who could just see Zara's profile all the
time when she put up those irritating, longhandled glasses of hers, now
gave her opinion of the bride-elect to Lord Charles Montfitchet, her
neighbor on the left hand.

"I strongly disapprove of her, Charles. Either her hair is dyed or her
eyes are blackened; that mixture is not natural, and if, indeed, it
should be in this case then I consider it uncanny and not what one would
wish for in the family."

"Oh, I say, my lady!" objected Lord Charles, "I think she is the most
stunning-looking young woman I've seen in a month of Sundays!"

Lady Coltshurst put up her glasses again and glared:

"I cannot bear your modern slang, Charles, but 'stunning,' used
literally, is quite appropriate. She does stun one; that is exactly it.
I fear poor Tristram with such a type can look forward to very little
happiness, or poor Jane to any likelihood that the Tancred name will
remain free from scandal."

Lord Charles grew exasperated and retaliated.

"By George! A demure mouse can cause scandal to a name, with probably
more certainty than this beauty!"

There was a member of Lady Coltshurst's husband's family whom she
herself, having no children, had brought out, and who had been
perilously near the Divorce Court this very season: and she was a dull,
colorless little thing.

Her ladyship turned the conversation abruptly, with an annihilating
glance. And fortunately, just then Zara rose, and the ladies filed out
of the room: and so this trying dinner was over.



CHAPTER XIII


Nothing could exceed Zara's dignity, when they reached the drawing-room
above. They at first stood in a group by the fire in the larger room,
and Emily and Mary tried to get a word in and say something nice in
their frank girlish way. They admired their future sister-in-law so
immensely, and if Zara had not thought they were all acting a part, as
she herself was, she would have been touched at their sweetness. As it
was she inwardly froze more and more, while she answered with
politeness; and Lady Ethelrida, watching quietly for a while, grew
further puzzled.

It was certainly a mask this extraordinary and beautiful young woman was
wearing, she felt, and presently, when Lady Coltshurst who had remained
rather silently aloof, only fixing them all in turn with her long
eyeglasses, drew the girls aside to talk to her by asking for news of
their mother's headache, Ethelrida indicated she and Zara might sit down
upon the nearest, stiff, French sofa; and as she clasped her thin, fine
hands together, holding her pale gray gloves which she did not attempt
to put on again, she said gently:

"I hope we shall all make you feel you are so welcome, Zara--may I call
you Zara? It is such a beautiful name I think."

The Countess Shulski's strange eyes seemed to become blacker than
ever--a startled, suspicious look grew in them, just such as had come
into the black panther's on a day when Francis Markrute whistled a
softly caressing note outside its bars: what did this mean?

"I shall be very pleased if you will," she said coldly.

Lady Ethelrida determined not to be snubbed. She must overcome this
barrier if she could, for Tristram's sake.

"England and our customs must seem so strange to you," she went on. "But
we are not at all disagreeable people when you know us!" And she smiled
encouragingly.

"It is easy to be agreeable when one is happy," Zara said. "And you all
seem very happy here--_sans souci_. It is good."

And Ethelrida wondered. "What can make you so unhappy, you beautiful
thing, with Tristram to love you, and youth and health and riches?"

And Zara thought, "This appears a sweet and most frank lady, but how can
I tell? I know not the English. It is perhaps because she is so well
bred that she is enabled to act so nicely."

"You have not yet seen Wrayth, have you?" Ethelrida went on. "I am sure
you will be interested in it, it is so old."

"Wr--ayth--?" Zara faltered. She had never heard of it! What was Wrayth?

"Perhaps I do not pronounce it as you are accustomed to think of it,"
Ethelrida said kindly. She was absolutely startled at the other's
ignorance. "Tristram's place, I mean. The Guiscards have owned it ever
since the Conqueror gave it to them after the Battle of Hastings, you
know. It is the rarest case of a thing being so long in one family, even
here in England, and the title has only gone in the male line, too, as
yet. But Tristram and Cyril are the very last. If anything happened to
them it would be the end. Oh! we are all so glad Tristram is going to be
married!"

Zara's eyes now suddenly blazed at the unconscious insinuation in this
speech. Any one who has ever watched a caged creature of the cat tribe
and seen how the whole gamut of emotions--sullen endurance, suspicion,
resentment, hate and rage, as well as contentment and happiness--can
appear in its orbs without the slightest aid from lids or eyebrows,
without the smallest alteration in mouth or chin, will understand how
Zara's pools of ink spoke while their owner remained icily still.

She understood perfectly the meaning of Ethelrida's speech. The line of
the Tancreds should go on through her! But never, never! That should
never be! If they were counting upon that they were counting in vain.
The marriage was never intended to be anything but an empty ceremony,
for mercenary reasons. There must be no mistake about this. What if Lord
Tancred had such ideas, too? And she quivered suddenly and caught in her
breath with the horror of this thought.

And who was Cyril? Zara had no knowledge of Cyril, any more than of
Wrayth! But she did not ask.

If Francis Markrute had heard this conversation he would have been very
much annoyed with himself, and would have blamed himself for stupidity.
He, of course, should have seen that his niece was sufficiently well
coached, in all the details that she should know, not to be led into
these pitfalls.

Ethelrida felt a sensation of a sort of petrified astonishment. There is
a French word, _ahuri_, which expresses her emotion exactly, but there
is no English equivalent. Tristram's fiancé was evidently quite ignorant
of the simplest facts about him, or his family, or his home! Her eyes
had blazed at Ethelrida's last speech, with a look of self-defence and
defiance. And yet Tristram was evidently passionately in love with her.
How could such things be? It was a great mystery. Ethelrida was thrilled
and interested.

Francis Markrute guessed the ladies' lonely moments would be most
difficult to pass, so he had curtailed the enjoyment of the port and old
brandy and cigars to the shortest possible dimensions, Tristram aiding
him. His one desire was to be near his fiancé.

The overmastering magnetic current which seemed to have drawn him from
the very first moment he had seen her now had augmented into almost
pain. She had been cruelly cold and disdainful at dinner whenever she
had spoken to him, her contempt showing plainly in her eyes, and it had
maddened and excited him; and when the other men had all drunk the
fiancés' health and wished them happiness he had gulped down the old
brandy, and vowed to himself, "Before a year is out I will make her love
me as I love her, so help me God!"

And then they all had trooped up into the drawing-room just as Ethelrida
was saying,

"The northern property, Morndale, is not half so pretty as Wrayth--"

But when she saw them enter she rose and ceded her place to Tristram who
gladly sank into the sofa beside his lady.

He was to have no tête-à-tête, however, for Jimmy Danvers who felt it
was his turn to say something to the coming bride came now, and leant
upon the mantelpiece beside them.

"I am going to be the most severe 'best man' next Wednesday, Countess,"
he said. "I shall see that Tristram is at St. George's a good half-hour
before the time, and that he does not drop the ring; you trust to me!"
And he laughed nervously, Zara's face was so unresponsive.

"Countess Shulski does not know the English ceremony, Jimmy," Tristram
interrupted quickly, "nor what is a 'best man.' Now, if we were only
across the water we would have a rehearsal of the whole show as we did
for Darrowood's wedding."

"That must have been a joke," said Jimmy.

"It was very sensible there; there was such a lot of fuss, and
bridesmaids, and things; but we are going to be quite quiet, aren't we,
Zara? I hate shows; don't you?"

"Immensely," was all she answered.

Then Sir James, who felt thoroughly crushed, after one or two more
fatuous remarks moved away, and Zara arose in her character of hostess,
and spoke to Lady Coltshurst.

Tristram crossed over to the Duke and rapidly began a political
discussion, but while his uncle appeared to notice nothing unusual, and
entered into it with interest, his kind, old heart was wrung with the
pain he saw his favorite nephew was suffering.

"Mr. Markrute, I am troubled," Lady Ethelrida said, as she walked with
the host to look at an exquisite Vigée le Brun across the room. "Your
niece is the most interesting personality I have ever met; but,
underneath, something is making her unhappy, I am sure. Please, what
does it mean? Oh, I know I have promised what I did at dinner, but are
you certain it is all right? And can they ever be really at peace
together?"

Francis Markrute bent over, apparently to point to a _bibelot_ which
lay on a table under the picture, and he said in a low, vibrating tone.

"I give you my word there is some one, who is dead--whom I loved--who
would come back and curse me now, if I should let this thing be, with a
doubt in my heart as to their eventual happiness."

And Lady Ethelrida looked full at him and saw that the man's cold face
was deeply moved and softened.

"If that is so then I will speculate no more," she said. "Listen! I will
trust you!"

"You dear, noble English lady," the financier replied, "how truly I
thank you!" And he let some of the emotion which he felt, gleam from his
eyes, while he changed the conversation.

A few minutes after this, Lady Coltshurst announced it was time to go,
and she would take the girls home. And the Duke's carriage was also
waiting, and good nights were said, and the host whispered to Jimmy
Danvers,

"Take Tancred along with you, too, please. My niece is overtired with
the strain of this evening and I want her to go to bed at once." And to
Tristram he said,

"Do not even say good night, like a dear fellow. Don't you see she is
almost ready to faint? Just go quietly with the rest, and come for her
to-morrow morning to take her to your mother."

So they all left as he wished, and he himself went back upstairs to the
big drawing-room and there saw Zara standing like a marble statue,
exactly as they had left her, and he went forward, and, bending, kissed
her hand.

"Most beautifully endured, my queenly niece!" he said; and then he led
her to the door and up to her room. She was perfectly mute.

But a little while afterwards, as he came to bed himself, he was
startled and chilled by hearing the _Chanson Triste_ being played in her
sitting-room, with a wailing, passionate pathos, as of a soul in
anguish.

And if he could have seen her face he would have seen her great eyes
streaming with tears, while she prayed:

"_Maman_, ask God to give me courage to get through all of this, since
it is for your Mirko."



CHAPTER XIV


Satan was particularly fresh next morning when Tristram took him for a
canter round the Park. He was glad of it: he required something to work
off steam upon. He was in a mood of restless excitement. During the
three weeks of Zara's absence he had allowed himself to dream into a
state of romantic love for her. He had glossed over in his mind her
distant coldness, her frigid adherence to the bare proposition, so that
to return to that state of things had come to him as a shock.

But, this morning, he knew he was a fool to have expected anything else.
He was probably a great fool altogether, but he never changed his mind,
and was prepared to pay the price of his folly. After all, there would
be plenty of time afterwards to melt her dislike, so he could afford to
wait now. He would not permit himself to suffer again as he had done
last night. Then he came in and had his bath, and made himself into a
very perfect-looking lover, to present himself to his lady at about
half-past twelve o'clock, to take her to his mother.

Zara was, if anything, whiter than usual when she came into the library
where he was waiting for her alone. The financier had gone to the City.
She had heavy, bluish shadows under her eyes, and he saw quite plainly
that, the night before, she must have been weeping bitterly.

A great tenderness came over him. What was this sorrow of hers? Why
might he not comfort her? He put out both hands and then, as she
remained stonily unresponsive, he dropped them, and only said quietly
that he hoped she was well, and his motor was waiting outside, and that
his mother, Lady Tancred, would be expecting them.

"I am ready," said Zara. And they went.

He told her as they flew along, that he had been riding in the Park that
morning, and had looked up at the house and wondered which was her
window; and then he asked her if she liked riding, and she said she had
never tried for ten years--the opportunity to ride had not been in her
life--but she used to like it when she was a child.

"I must get you a really well-mannered hack," he said joyously. Here was
a subject she had not snubbed him over! "And you will let me teach you
again when we go down to Wrayth, won't you?"

But before she could answer they had arrived at the house in Queen
Street.

Michelham, with a subdued beam on his old face, stood inside the door
with his footmen, and Tristram said gayly,

"Michelham, this is to be her new ladyship; Countess Shulski"--and he
turned to Zara. "Michelham is a very old friend of mine, Zara. We used
to do a bit of poaching together, when I was a boy and came home from
Eton."

Michelham was only a servant and could not know of her degradation, so
Zara allowed herself to smile and looked wonderfully lovely, as the old
man said,

"I am sure I wish your ladyship every happiness, and his lordship, too;
and, if I may say so, with such a gentleman your ladyship is sure to
have it."

And Tristram chaffed him, and they went upstairs.

Lady Tancred had rigidly refrained from questioning her daughters, on
their return from the dinnerparty; she had not even seen them until the
morning, and when they had both burst out with descriptions of their
future sister-in-law's beauty and strangeness their mother had stopped
them.

"Do not tell me anything about her, dear children," she had said. "I
wish to judge for myself without prejudice."

But Lady Coltshurst could not be so easily repressed. She had called
early, on purpose to give her views, with the ostensible excuse of an
inquiry about her sister-in-law's health.

"I am afraid you will be rather unfavorably impressed with Tristram's
choice, when you have seen her, Jane," she announced. "I confess I was.
She treated us all as though _she_ were conferring the honor, not
receiving it, and she is by no means a type that promises domestic
tranquillity for Tristram."

"Really, Julia!" Lady Tancred protested. "I must beg of you to say no
more. I have perfect confidence in my son, and wish to receive his
future wife with every mark of affection."

"Your efforts will be quite wasted, then, Jane," her sister-in-law
snapped. "She is most forbidding, and never once unbent nor became
genial, the whole evening. And besides, for a lady, she is much too
striking looking."

"She cannot help being beautiful," Lady Tancred said. "I am sure I shall
admire her very much, from what the girls tell me. But we will not
discuss her. It was so kind of you to come, and my head is much
better."

"Then I will be off!" Lady Coltshurst sniffed in a slightly offended
tone. Really, relations were so tiresome! They never would accept a word
of advice or warning in the spirit it was given, and Jane in particular
was unpleasantly difficult.

So she got into her electric brougham, and was rolled away, happily
before Tristram and his lady appeared upon the scene; but the jar of her
words still lingered with Lady Tancred, in spite of all her efforts to
forget it.

Zara's heart beat when they got to the door, and she felt extremely
antagonistic. Francis Markrute had left her in entire ignorance of the
English customs, for a reason of his own. He calculated if he informed
her that on Tristram's side it was purely a love match, she, with her
strange temperament, and sense of honor, would never have accepted it.
He knew she would have turned upon him and said she could be no party to
such a cheat. He with his calm, calculating brain had weighed the pros
and cons of the whole matter: to get her to consent, for her brother's
sake in the beginning, under the impression that it was a dry business
arrangement, equally distasteful personally to both parties--to leave
her with this impression and keep the pair as much as possible apart,
until the actual wedding; and then to leave her awakening to
Tristram--was his plan. A woman would be impossibly difficult to please,
if, in the end, she failed to respond to such a lover as Tristram! He
counted upon what he had called her moral antennae to make no mistakes.
It would not eventually prejudice matters if the family did find her a
little stiff, as long as she did not actually show her contempt for
their apparent willingness to support the bargain. But her look of
scorn, the night before, when he had shown some uneasiness on this
score, had reassured him. He would leave things alone and let her make
her own discoveries.

So now she entered her future mother-in-law's room, with a haughty mien
and no friendly feelings in her heart. She was well acquainted with the
foreign examples of mother-in-law. They interfered with everything and
had their sons under their thumbs. They seemed always mercenary, and
were the chief agents in promoting a match, if it were for their own
family's advantage. No doubt Uncle Francis had arranged the whole affair
with this Lady Tancred in the first instance, and she, Zara, would not
be required to keep up the comedy, as with the uncle and cousins. She
decided she would be quite frank with her if the occasion required, and
if she should, by chance, make the same insinuation of the continuance
of the Tancred race as Lady Ethelrida had innocently done, she would
have plainly to say that was not in the transaction. For her own ends
she must be Lord Tancred's wife and let her uncle have what glory he
pleased from the position; if that were his reason, and as for Lord
Trancred's ends, he was to receive money. That was all: it was quite
simple.

The two women were mutually surprised when they looked at one another.
Lady Tancred's first impression was, "It is true she is a very
disturbing type, but how well bred and how beautiful!" And Zara thought,
"It is possible that, after all, I may be wrong. She looks too proud to
have stooped to plan this thing. It may be only Lord Tancred's
doing--men are more horrible than women."

"This is Zara, Mother," Tristram said.

And Lady Tancred held out her hands, and then drew her new
daughter--that was to be--nearer and kissed her.

And over Zara there crept a thrill. She saw that the elder lady was
greatly moved, and no woman had kissed her since her mother's death.
Why, if it were all a bargain, should she tenderly kiss her?

"I am so glad to welcome you, dear," Lady Tancred said, determining to
be very gracious. "I am almost pleased not to have been able to go last
night. Now I can have you all to myself for this, our first little
meeting."

And they sat down on a sofa, and Zara asked about her head; and Lady
Tancred told her the pain was almost gone, and this broke the ice and
started a conversation.

"I want you to tell me of yourself," Lady Tancred said. "Do you think
you will like this old England of ours, with its damp and its gloom in
the autumn, and its beautiful fresh spring? I want you to--and to love
your future home."

"Everything is very strange to me, but I will try," Zara answered.

"Tristram has been making great arrangements to please you at Wrayth,"
Lady Tancred went on. "But, of course, he has told you all about it."

"I have had to be away all the time," Zara felt she had better say--and
Tristram interrupted.

"They are all to be surprises, Mother; everything is to be new to Zara,
from beginning to end. You must not tell her anything of it."

Then Lady Tancred spoke of gardens. She hoped Zara liked gardens; she
herself was a great gardener, and had taken much pride in her herbaceous
borders and her roses at Wrayth.

And when they had got to this stage of the conversation Tristram felt he
could safely leave them to one another, so, saying he wanted to talk to
his sisters, he went out of the room.

"It will be such happiness to think of your living in the old home," the
proud lady said. "It was a great grief to us all when we had to shut it
up, two years ago; but you will, indeed, adorn it for its reopening."

Zara did not know what to reply. She vaguely understood that one might
love a home, though she had never had one but the gloomy castle near
Prague; and that made her sigh when she thought of it.

But a garden she knew she should love. And Mirko was so fond of flowers.
Oh! if they would let her have a beautiful country home in peace, and
Mirko to come sometimes, and play there, and chase butterflies, with his
excited, poor little face, she would indeed be grateful to them. Her
thoughts went on in a dream of this, while Lady Tancred talked of many
things, and she answered, "Yes," and "No," with gentle respect. Her
future mother-in-law's great dignity pleased her sense of the fitness of
things; she so disliked gush of any sort herself, and she felt now that
she knew where she was and there need be no explanations. The family,
one and all, evidently intended to play the same part, and she would,
too. When the awakening came it would be between herself and Tristram.
Yes, she must think of him now as "Tristram!"

Her thoughts had wandered again when she heard Lady Tancred's voice,
saying,

"I wanted to give you this myself," and she drew a small case from a
table near and opened it, and there lay a very beautiful diamond ring.
"It is my own little personal present to you, my new, dear daughter.
Will you wear it sometimes, Zara, in remembrance of this day and in
remembrance that I give into your hands the happiness of my son, who is
dearer to me than any one on earth?"

And the two proud pairs of eyes met, and Zara could not answer, and
there was a strange silence between them for a second. And then Tristram
came back into the room, which created a diversion, and she was enabled
to say some ordinary conventional things about the beauty of the stones,
and express her thanks for the gift. Only, in her heart, she determined
never to wear it. It would burn her hand, she thought, and she could
never be a hypocrite.

Luncheon was then announced, and they went into the dining-room.

Here she saw Tristram in a new light, with only "Young Billy" and Jimmy
Danvers who had dropped in, and his mother and sisters.

He was gay as a schoolboy, telling Billy who had not spoken a word to
Zara the night before that now he should sit beside her, and that he was
at liberty to make love to his new cousin! And Billy, aged nineteen--a
perfectly stolid and amiable youth--proceeded to start a laborious
conversation, while the rest of the table chaffed about things which
were Greek to Zara, but she was grateful not to have to talk, and so
passed off the difficulties of the situation.

And the moment the meal was over Tristram took her back to Park Lane.
He, too, was thankful the affair had been got through; he hardly spoke
as they went along, and in silence followed her into the house and into
the library, and there waited for her commands.

Whenever they were alone the disguises of the part fell from Zara, and
she resumed the icy mien.

"Good-bye," she said coldly. "I am going into the country to-morrow for
two or three days. I shall not see you until Monday. Have you anything
more it is necessary to say?"

"You are going into the country!" Tristram exclaimed, aghast. "But I
will not--" and then he paused, for her eyes had flashed ominously. "I
mean," he went on, "must you go? So soon before our wedding?"

She drew herself up and spoke in a scathing voice.

"Why must I repeat again what I said when you gave me your ring?--I do
not wish to see or speak with you. You will have all you bargained for.
Can you not leave my company out of the question?"

The Tancred stern, obstinate spirit was thoroughly roused. He walked up
and down the room rapidly for a moment, fuming with hurt rage. Then
reason told him to wait. He had no intention of breaking off the match
now, no matter what she should do; and this was Thursday; there were
only five more days to get through, and when once she should be his
wife--and then he looked at her, as she stood in her dark, perfect
dress, with the great, sable wrap slipping from her shoulders and making
a regal background, and her beauty fired his senses and made his eyes
swim; and he bent forward and took her hand.

"Very well, you beautiful, unkind thing," he said. "But if you do not
want to marry me you had better say so at once, and I will release you
from your promise. Because when the moment comes afterwards for our
crossing of swords there will be no question as to who is to be
master--I tell you that now."

And Zara dragged her hand from him, and, with the black panther's
glance in her eyes, she turned to the window and stood looking out.

Then after a second she said in a strangled voice,

"I wish that the marriage shall take place.--And now, please go."

And without further words he went.



CHAPTER XV


On her way to Bournemouth next day, to see Mirko, Zara met Mimo in the
British Museum. They walked along the galleries on the ground floor
until they found a bench near the mausoleum of Halicarnassus. To look at
it gave them both infinite pleasure; they knew so well the masterpieces
of all the old Greeks. Mimo, it seemed, had been down to see his son ten
days before. They had met secretly. Mirko had stolen out, and with the
cunning of his little brain fully on the alert he had dodged Mrs. Morley
in the garden, and had fled to the near pine woods with his violin; and
there had met his father and had a blissful time. He was certainly
better, Mimo said, a little fatter and with much less cough, and he
seemed fairly happy and quite resigned. The Morleys were so kind and
good, but, poor souls! it was not their fault if they could not
understand! It was not given to every one to have the understanding of
his Chérisette and his own papa, Mirko had said, but so soon he would be
well; then he would be able to come back to them, and in the meantime he
was going to learn lessons, learn the tiresome things that his
Chérisette alone knew how to teach him with comprehension. The new tutor
who came each day from the town was of a reasonableness, but no wit!
"Body of Bacchus!" the father said, "the poor child had not been able to
make the tutor laugh once--in a week--when we met."

And then after a while it seemed that there was some slight care upon
Mimo's mind. It had rained, it appeared, before the end of their stolen
meeting. It had rained all the morning and then had cleared up
gloriously fine, and they had sat down on a bank under the trees, and
Mirko had played divinely all sorts of gay airs. But when he got up he
had shivered a little, and Mimo could see that his clothes were wet, and
then the rain had come on immediately again, and he had made him run
back. He feared he must have got thoroughly soaked, and he had had
nothing since but one postcard, which said that Mirko had been in bed,
though he was now much better and longing--longing to see his
Chérisette!

"Oh, Mimo! how could you let him sit on the grass!" Zara exclaimed
reproachfully, when he got thus far. "And why was I not told? It may
have made him seriously ill. Oh, the poor angel! And I must stay so
short a while--and then this wedding--" She stopped abruptly and her
eyes became black. For she knew there was no asking for respite. To
obtain her brother's possible life she must be ready and resigned, at
the altar at St. George's, Hanover Square, on Wednesday the 25th of
October, at 2 o'clock, and, once made a wife, she must go with Lord
Tancred to the Lord Warren Hotel at Dover, to spend the night.

She rose with a convulsive quiver, and looked with blank, sightless eyes
at an Amazon in the frieze hard by. The Amazon--she saw, when vision
came back to her--was hurling a spear at a splendid young Greek. That is
how she felt she would like to behave to her future husband. Men and
their greed of money, and their revolting passions!--and her poor little
Mirko ill, perhaps, from his father's carelessness--How could she leave
him? And if she did not his welfare would be at an end and life an
abyss.

There was no use scolding Mimo; she knew of old no one was sorrier than
he for his mistakes, for which those he loved best always had to suffer.
It had taken the heart out of him, the anxious thought, he said, but,
knowing that Chérisette must be so busy arranging to get married, he had
not troubled her, since she could do nothing until her return to
England, and then he knew she would arrange to go to Mirko at once, in
any case.

He, Mimo, had been too depressed to work, and the picture of the London
fog was not much further advanced, and he feared it would not be ready
for her wedding gift.

"Oh, never mind!" said Zara. "I know you will think of me kindly, and I
shall like that as well as any present."

And then she drove to the Waterloo station alone, a gnawing anxiety in
her heart. And all the journey to Bournemouth her spirits sank lower and
lower until, when she got there, it seemed as if the old cab-horse were
a cow in its slowness, to get to the doctor's trim house.

"Yes," Mrs. Morley said as soon as she arrived, "your little brother has
had a very sharp attack."

He escaped from the garden about ten days before, she explained, and was
gone at least two hours, and then returned wet through, and was a little
light-headed that night, and had talked of "Maman and the angels," and
"Papa and Chérisette," but they could obtain no information from him as
to why he went, nor whom he had seen. He had so rapidly recovered that
the doctor had not thought it necessary to let any one know, and she,
Mrs. Morley--guessing how busy one must be ordering a trousseau--when
there was no danger had refrained from sending a letter, to be forwarded
from the given address.

Here Zara's eyes had flashed, and she had said sternly,

"The trousseau was not of the slightest consequence in comparison to my
brother's health."

Mirko was upstairs in his pretty bedroom, playing with a puzzle and the
nurse; he had not been told of his sister's proposed coming, but some
sixth sense seemed to inform him it was she, when her footfall sounded
on the lower stairs, for they heard an excited voice shouting:

"I tell you I will go--I will go to her, my Chérisette!" And Zara
hastened the last part, to avoid his rushing, as she feared he would do,
out of his warm room into the cold passage.

The passionate joy he showed at the sight of her made a tightness round
her heart. He did not look ill, only, in some unaccountable way, he
seemed to have grown smaller. There was, too, even an extra pink flush
in his cheeks.

He must sit on her lap and touch all her pretty things. She had put on
her uncle's big pearl earrings and one string of big pearls, on purpose
to show him; he so loved what was beautiful and refined.

"Thou art like a queen, Chérisette," he told her. "Much more beautiful
than when we had our tea party, and I wore Papa's paper cap. And
everything new! The uncle, then, is very rich," he went on, while he
stroked the velvet on her dress.

And she kissed and soothed him to sleep in her arms, when he was ready
for his bed. It was getting quite late, and she sang a soft, Slavonic
cradle song, in a low cooing voice, and, every now and then, before the
poor little fellow sank entirely to rest, he would open his beautiful,
pathetic eyes, and they would swim with love and happiness, while he
murmured, "Adored Chérisette!"

The next day--Saturday--she never left him. They played games together,
and puzzles. The nurse was kind, but of a thickness of understanding,
like all the rest, he said, and, with his sister there, he could
dispense with her services for the moment. He wished, when it grew dusk
and they were to have their tea, to play his violin to only her, in the
firelight; and there he drew forth divine sounds for more than an hour,
tearing at Zara's heart-strings with the exquisite notes until her eyes
grew wet. And at last he began something that she did not know, and the
weird, little figure moved as in a dance in the firelight, while he
played this new air as one inspired, and then stopped suddenly with a
crash of joyous chords.

"It is _Maman_ who has taught me that!" he whispered. "When I was ill
she came often and sang it to me, and when they would give me back my
violin I found it at once, and now I am so happy. It talks of the
butterflies in the woods, which are where she lives, and there is a
little white one which flies up beside her with her radiant blue wings.
And she has promised me that the music will take me to her, quite soon.
Oh, Chérisette!"

"No, no," said Zara faintly. "I cannot spare you, darling. I shall have
a beautiful garden of my own next summer, and you must come and stay
with me, Mirko mio, and chase real butterflies with a golden net."

And this thought enchanted the child. He must hear all about his
sister's garden. By chance there was an old number of _Country Life_
lying on the table, and, the nurse bringing in the tea at the moment,
they turned on the electric light and looked at the pictures; and by the
strangest coincidence, when they came to the weekly series of those
beautiful houses she read at the beginning of the article, "Wrayth--the
property of Lord Tancred of Wrayth."

"See, Mirko," she said in a half voice; "our garden will look exactly
like this."

And the child examined every picture with intense interest. One of a
statue of Pan and his pipe, making the center of a star in the Italian
parterre, pleased him most.

"For see, Chérisette, he, too, is not shaped as other people are," he
whispered with delight. "Look! And he plays music, also! When you walk
there, and I am with _Maman_, you must remember that this is me!"

It was with deep grief and foreboding that Zara left him, on Monday
morning, in spite of the doctor's assurance that he was indeed on the
turn to get quite well--well of this sharp attack--whether he would ever
grow to be a man was always a doubt but there was no present
anxiety--she could be happy on that score. And with this she was obliged
to rest content.

But all the way back in the train she saw the picture of the Italian
parterre at Wrayth with the statue of Pan, in the center of the star,
playing his pipes.



CHAPTER XVI


The second wedding day of Zara Shulski dawned with a glorious sun. One
of those autumn mornings that seem like a return to the spring--so fresh
and pure the air. She had not seen her bridegroom since she got back
from Bournemouth, nor any of the family; she had said to her uncle that
she could not bear it.

"I am at the end of my forces, Uncle Francis. You are so clever--you can
invent some good excuse. If I must see Lord Tancred I cannot answer for
what I may do."

And the financier had realized that this was the truth. The strings of
her soul were strained to breaking point, and he let her pass the whole
day of Tuesday in peace.

She signed numbers of legal documents concerning her marriage
settlements, without the slightest interest; and then her uncle handed
her one which he said she was to read with care. It set forth in the
wearisome language of the law the provision for Mirko's life, "in
consideration of a certain agreement" come to between her uncle and
herself. But should the boy Mirko return at any time to the man Sykypri,
his father, or should she, Zara, from the moneys settled upon herself
give sums to this man Sykypri the transaction between herself and her
uncle regarding the boy's fortune would be null and void. This was the
document's sense.

Zara read it over but the legal terms were difficult for her. "If it
means exactly what we agreed upon, Uncle Francis, I will sign it," she
said, "that is--that Mirko shall be cared for and have plenty of money
for life."

And Francis Markrute replied,

"That is what is meant."

And then she had gone to her room, and spent the night before her
wedding alone. She had steadily read one of her favorite books: she
could not permit herself for a moment to think.

There was a man going to be hanged on the morrow, she had seen in the
papers; and she wondered if, this last night in his cell, the condemned
wretch was numb, or was he feeling at bay, like herself?

Then, at last she opened the window and glanced out on the moon. It was
there above her, over the Park, so she turned out the lights, and,
putting her furs around her, she sat for a while and gazed above the
treetops, while she repeated her prayers.

And Mimo saw her, as he stood in the shadow on the pavement at the other
side of

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/12450