“Now if I were married,” Lord Elterton went on, “I would try to make my wife so happy, and would love her so much she would never give me cause to be jealous.”

“Love!” said Zara.  “How you talk of love—­and what does it mean?  Gratification to oneself, or to the loved person?”

“Both,” said Lord Elterton, and looked down so devotedly into her eyes that the old Duke, who was near, with Laura, thought it was quite time the young man’s innings should be over!

So he joined them.

“Come with me, Zara, while I show you some of Tristram’s ancestors on his mother’s side.”

And he placed her arm in his gallantly, and led her away to the most interesting pictures.

“Well, ’pon my soul!” he said, as they went along.  “Things are vastly changed since my young days.  Here, Tristram—­” and he beckoned to his nephew who was with Lady Anningford—­“come here and help me to show your wife some of your forbears.”  And then he went on with his original speech.  “Yes, as I was saying, things are vastly changed since I brought Ethelrida’s dear mother back here, after our honeymoon!—­a month in those days!  I would have punched any other young blood’s head, who had even looked at her!  And you philander off with that fluffy, little empty-pate, Laura, and Arthur Elterton makes love to your bride!  A pretty state of things, ’pon my soul!” And he laughed reprovingly.

Tristram smiled with bitter sarcasm as he answered, “You were absurdly old-fashioned, Uncle.  But perhaps Aunt Corisande was different to the modern woman.”

Zara did not speak.  The black panther’s look, on its rare day of slumberous indifference when it condescends to come to the front of the cage, grew in her eyes, but the slightest touch could make her snarl.

“Oh! you must not ever blame the women,” the Duke—­this preux chevalier—­said.  “If they are different it is the fault of the men.  I took care that my duchess wanted me!  Why, my dear boy, I was jealous of even her maid, for at least a year!”

And Tristram thought to himself that he went further than that and was jealous of even the air Zara breathed!

“You must have been awfully happy, Uncle,” he said with a sigh.

But Zara spoke never a word.  And the Duke saw that there was something too deeply strained between them, for his kindly meant persiflage to do any good; so he turned to the pictures, and drew them into lighter things; and the moment he could, Tristram rejoined Lady Anningford by one of the great fires.

Laura Highford, left alone with Lord Elterton up at the end of the long picture gallery, felt she must throw off some steam.  She could not keep from the subject which was devouring her; she knew now she had made an irreparable mistake in what she had said to Tristram in the afternoon, and how to repair it she did not know at present, but she must talk to some one.

“You will have lots of chance before a year is out, Arthur,” she said with a bitter smile.  “You need not be in such a hurry!  That marriage won’t last more than a few months—­they hate each other already.”