Part 17 (2/2)

He felt extremely moved, and excited, too, when he left. She had talked to him so tenderly--the proud mother who so seldom unbent. How marriage was a beautiful but serious thing, and he must love and try to understand his wife--and then she spoke of her own great love for him, and her pride in their n.o.ble name and descent.

”And I will pray to G.o.d that you have strong, beautiful children, Tristram, so that there may in years to come be no lack of the Tancreds of Wrayth.”

When he got outside in the street the moonlight flooded the road, so he sent his motor away and decided to walk. He wanted breathing s.p.a.ce, he wanted to think, and he turned down into Curzon Street and from, thence across Great Stanhope Street and into the Park.

And to-morrow night, at this time, the beautiful Zara would be his! and they would be dining alone together at Dover, and surely she would not be so icily cold; surely--surely he could get her to melt.

And then further visions came to him, and he walked very fast; and presently he found himself opposite his lady's house.

An impulse just to see her window overcame him, and he crossed the road and went out of the gate. And there on the pavement he saw Mimo, also with face turned, gazing up.

And in a flash he thought he recognized that this was the man he had seen that day in Whitehall, when he was in his motor car, going very fast.

A mad rage of jealousy and suspicion rushed through him. Every devil whispered, ”Here is a plot. You know nothing of the woman whom to-morrow you are blindly going to make your wife. Who is this man? What is his connection with her? A lover's--of course. No one but a lover would gaze up at a window on a moonlight night.”

And it was at this moment that Zara opened the window and, for a second, both men saw her slender, rounded figure standing out sharply against the ground of the room. Then she turned, and put out the light.

A murderous pa.s.sion of rage filled Lord Tancred's heart.

He looked at Mimo and saw that the man's lips were muttering a prayer, and that he had drawn a little silver crucifix from his coat pocket, and, also, that he was unconscious of any surroundings, for his face was rapt; and he stepped close to him and heard him murmur, in his well-p.r.o.nounced English,

”Mary, Mother of G.o.d, pray for her, and bring her happiness!”

And his common sense rea.s.sured him somewhat. If the man were a lover, he could not pray so, on this, the night before her wedding to another. It was not in human, male nature, he felt, to do such an unselfish thing as that.

Then Mimo raised his soft felt hat in his rather dramatic way to the window, and walked up the street.

And Tristram, a prey to all sorts of conflicting emotions, went back into the Park.

It seemed to Francis Markrute that more than half the n.o.bility of England had a.s.sembled in St. George's, Hanover Square, next day, as, with the beautiful bride on his arm, he walked up the church.

She wore a gown of dead white velvet, and her face looked the same shade, under the shadow of a wonderful picture creation, of black velvet and feathers, in the way of a hat.

The only jewels she had on were the magnificent pearls which were her uncle's gift. There was no color about her except in her red burnished hair and her red, curved mouth.

And the whole company thrilled as she came up the aisle. She looked like the Princess in a fairy tale--but just come to life.

The organ stopped playing, and now, as in a dream she knew that she was kneeling beside Tristram and that the Bishop had joined their hands.

She repeated the vows mechanically, in a low, quiet voice. All the sense of it that came to her brain was Tristram's firm utterance, ”I, Tristram Lorrimer Guiscard, take thee, Zara Elinka, to be my wedded wife.”

And so, at last, the ceremony was over, and Lord and Lady Tancred walked into the vestry to sign their names. And as Zara slipped her hand from the arm of her newly-made husband he bent down his tall head and kissed her lips; and, fortunately, the train of coming relations and friends were behind them, as yet, and the Bishops were looking elsewhere, or they would have been startled to observe the bride s.h.i.+ver, and to have seen the expression of pa.s.sionate resentment which crept into her face.

But the bridegroom saw it, and it stabbed his heart.

Then it seemed that a number of people kissed her: his mother and sisters, and Lady Ethelrida, and, lastly, the Duke.

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