And Zara saw that Tristram’s eyes flashed blue steel, and that he did not like the chaff at all.  So, just out of some contrariness—­he had been with Lady Highford all day so why should she not amuse herself, too; indeed, why should either of them care what the other did—­so just out of contrariness she smiled again at Lord Elterton and said: 

     “‘Then tread we a measure, my Lord Lochinvar.’”

And off they went.

And Tristram, with his face more set than the Crusader ancestor’s in Wrayth Church, said to his uncle, Lord Charles, “We are all wet through:  let us come along.”

And he turned round and went out.

And as he walked, he wondered to himself how much she must know of English poetry to have been able to answer Arthur like that.  If only they could be friends and talk of the books he, too, loved!  And then he realized more strongly than ever the impossibility of the situation—­he, who had been willing to undertake it with the joyous self-confidence with which he had started upon a lion hunt!

He felt he was getting to the end of his tether; it could not go on.  Her words that night at Dover, had closed down all the possible sources he could have used for her melting.

And a man cannot in a week break through a thousand years of inherited pride.

Before the Canada scheme had presented itself he had rather thought of joining with a friend for another trip to the Soudan:  it might not be too late still, when they had got over the Wrayth ordeal, the tenants’ dinners, and the speeches, and the cruel mockery of it all.  He would see—­perhaps—­what could be done, but to go on living in this daily torture he would not submit to, for the “loving her less” had not yet begun!

And when he had left, although she would not own it to herself, Zara’s joy in the day was gone.

The motors came to fetch them presently, and they all went back to the Castle to dress and have tea.

Tristram’s face was still stony and he had sat down in a sofa by Laura, when a footman brought a telegram to Zara.  He watched her open it, with concentrated interest.  Whom were these mysterious telegrams from?  He saw her face change as it had done in Paris, only not so seriously; and then she crushed up the paper into a ball and threw it in the fire.  The telegram had been:  “Very slightly feverish again,” and signed “Mimo.”

“Now I remember where I have seen your wife before,” said Laura.  And Tristram said absently,

“Where?”

“In the waiting-room at Waterloo station—­and yet—­no, it could not have been she, because she was quite ordinarily dressed, and she was talking very interestedly to a foreign man.”  She watched Tristram’s face and saw she had hit home for some reason; so she went on, enchanted:  “Of course it could not have been she, naturally; but the type is so peculiar that any other like it would remind one, would it not?”