“I believe I have no prejudices at all,” said Lady Anningford.  “If I like people, I don’t care what is in their blood.”

“It is all right till you scratch ’em.  Then it comes out; but if, as I say, it is far enough back, the Jew will do the future Tancred race a power of good, to get the commercial common sense of it into them—­knew Maurice Grey, her father, years ago, and he was just as indifferent to money and material things, as Tristram is himself.  So the good will come from the Markrute side, we will hope.”

“I rather wonder, Crow—­if there ever will be any more of the Tancred race.  I thought last night we had a great failure, and that nothing will make that affair prosper.  I don’t believe they ever see one another from one day to the next!  It is extremely sad.”

“I told you they had come to a ticklish point in their careers,” the Crow permitted himself to remind his friend, “and, ’pon my soul, I could not bet you one way or another how it will go.  ‘I hae me doots,’ as the Scotchman said.”

Meanwhile, Ethelrida, on the plea of letters to write, had retired to her room; and there, as the clock struck a quarter past three, she awaited—­what?  She would not own to herself that it was her fate.  She threw dust in her own eyes, and called it a pleasant talk!

She looked absurdly young for her twenty-six years, just a dainty slip of a patrician girl, as she sat there on her chintz sofa, with its fresh pattern of lilacs and tender green.  Everything was in harmony, even to her soft violet cloth dress trimmed with fur.

And again as the hour for the trysting chimed, her lover that was to be, entered the room.

“This is perfectly divine,” he said, as he came in, while the roguish twinkle of a schoolboy, who has outwitted his mates sparkled in his fine eyes.  “All those good people tramping for miles in the cold and damp, while we two sensible ones are going to enjoy a nice fire and a friendly chat.”

Thus he disarmed her nervousness, and gave her time.

“May I sit by you, my Lady Ethelrida?” he said; and as she smiled, he took his seat, but not too near her—­nothing must be the least hurried or out of place.

So for about a quarter of an hour they talked of books—­their favorites—­hers, all so simple and chaste, his, of all kinds, so long as they showed style, and were masterpieces of taste and balance.  Then, as a great piece of wood fell in the open grate and made a volley of sparks, he leaned forward a little and asked her if he might tell her that for which he had come, the history of a man.

The daylight was drawing in, and they had an hour before them.

“Yes,” said Ethelrida, “only let us make up the fire first, and only turn on that one soft light,” and she pointed to a big gray china owl who carried a simple shade of white painted with lilacs on his back.  “Then we need not move again, because I want extremely to hear it—­the history of a man.”