Part 24 (1/2)

Meanwhile, it was his business as the friend and uncle of the two to be genial and make things go on greased wheels.

So he exerted himself to talk at dinner--their dinner _a trois_--. He told them all the news that had happened during the week--Was it only a week--Zara and Tristram both thought!

How there were rumors that in the coming spring there might be a general election, and that the Radicals were making fresh plots to ruin the country; but there was to be no autumn session, and, as usual, the party to which they all had the honor to belong was half asleep.

And then the two men grew deep in a political discussion, so as soon as Zara had eaten her peach she said she would leave them to their talk, and say ”Good night,” as she was tired out.

”Yes, my niece,” said her uncle who had risen. And he did what he had not done since she was a child, he stooped and kissed her white forehead. ”Yes, indeed, you must go and rest. We both want you to do us justice to-morrow, don't we, Tristram? We must have our special lady looking her best.”

And she smiled a faint smile as she pa.s.sed from the room.

”By George! my dear boy,” the financier went on, ”I don't believe I ever realized what a gorgeously beautiful creature my niece is. She is like some wonderful exotic blossom--a ma.s.s of snow and flame!”

And Tristram said with unconscious cynicism,

”Certainly snow--but where is the flame?”

Francis Markrute looked at him out of the corners of his clever eyes.

She had been icy to him in Paris, then! But his was not the temperament to interfere. It was only a question of time. After all, a week was not long to grow accustomed to a perfect stranger.

Then they went back to the library, and smoked for an hour or so and continued their political chat; and at last Markrute said to his new nephew-in-law blandly,

”In a year or so, when you and Zara have a son, I will give you, my dear boy, some papers to read which will interest you as showing the mother's side of his lineage. It will be a fit balance, as far as actual blood goes, to your own.”

In a year or so, when Zara should have a son!

Of all the aspects of the case, which her pride and disdain had robbed him of, this, Tristram felt, was perhaps--though it had not before presented itself to him--the most cruel. He would have no son!

He got up suddenly and threw his unfinished cigar into the grate--that old habit of his when he was moved--and he said in a voice that the financier knew was strained,

”That is awfully good of you. I shall have to have it inserted in the family tree--some day. But now I think I shall turn in. I want to have my eye rested, and be as fit as a fiddle for the shoot. I have had a tiring week.”

And Francis Markrute came out with him into the pa.s.sage and up to the first floor, and when they got so far they heard the notes of the _Chanson Triste_ being played again from Zara's sitting-room. She had not gone to bed, then, it seemed!

”Good G.o.d!” said Tristram. ”I don't know why, but I wish to heaven she would not play that tune.”

And the two men looked at one another with some uneasy wonder in their eyes.

”Go on and take her to bed,” the financier suggested. ”Perhaps she does not like being left so long alone.”

Tristram went upstairs with a bitter laugh to himself.

He did not go near the sitting-room; he went straight into the room which had been allotted to himself: and a savage sense of humiliation and impotent rage convulsed him.

The next day, the express which would stop for them at Tylling Green, the little station for Montfitchet, started at two o'clock, and the financier had given orders to have an early lunch at twelve before they left. He, himself, went off to the City for half an hour to read his letters, at ten o'clock, and was surprised when he asked Turner if Lord and Lady Tancred had break-fasted to hear that her ladys.h.i.+p had gone out at half-past nine o'clock and that his lords.h.i.+p had given orders to his valet not to disturb him, in his lords.h.i.+p's room--and here Turner coughed--until half-past ten.

”See that they have everything they want,” his master said, and then went out. But when he was in his electric brougham, gliding eastwards, he frowned to himself.

”The proud, little minx! So she has insisted upon keeping to the business bargain up till now, has she!” he thought. ”If it goes on we shall have to make her jealous. That would be an infallible remedy for her caprice.”

But Zara was not concerned with such things at all for the moment. She was waiting anxiously for Mimo at their trysting-place, the mausoleum of Halicarna.s.sus in the British Museum, and he was late. He would have the last news of Mirko. No reply had awaited her to her telegram to Mrs.