“I believe we have made a mistake after all, Crow,” Lady Anningford said disappointedly.  “Look—­he is quite unmoved.”

The Crow gave one of his chuckles, while he answered slowly, between his sips of tea: 

“A man doesn’t handle millions in the year, and twist and turn about half the governments of Europe, if he can’t keep his face from showing what he doesn’t mean you to see!  Bless your dear heart, Mr. Francis Markrute is no infant!” and the chuckle went on.

“You may think yourself very wise, Crow, and so you are,” Lady Anningford retorted severely, “but you don’t know anything about love.  When a man is in love, even if he were Machiavelli himself, it would be bound to show in his eye—­if one looked long enough.”

“Then your plan, my dear Queen Anne, is to look,” the Crow said, smiling.  “For my part, I want to see how the other pair have got on.  They are my pets; and I don’t consider they have spent at all a suitable honeymoon Sunday afternoon—­Tristram, with a headache in the smoking-room, and the bride, taking a walk and being made love to by Arthur Elterton, and Young Billy, alternately.  The kid is as wild about her as Tristram himself, I believe!”

“Then you still think Tristram is in love with her, do you, Crow?” asked Anne, once more interested in her original thrill.  “He did not show the smallest signs of it last night then, if so; and how he did not seize her in his arms and devour her there and then, with all that lovely hair down and her exquisite shape showing the outline so in that dress—­I can’t think!  He must be as cold as a stone, and I never thought him so before, did you?”

“No, and he isn’t either, I tell you what, my dear girl, there is something pretty grim keeping those two apart, I am sure.  She is the kind of woman who arouses the fiercest passions; and Tristram is in the state that, if something were really to set alight his jealousy, he might kill her some day.”

“Crow—­how terrible!” gasped Anne, and then seeing that her friend’s face was serious, and not chaffing, she, too, looked grave.  “Then what on earth is to be done?” she asked.

“I don’t know, I have been thinking it over ever since I came in.  I found him in the smoking-room, staring in front of him, not even pretending to read, and looking pretty white about the gills; and when he saw it was only me, and I asked him if his head were worse, and whether he had not better have a brandy and soda, he simply said:  ’No, thanks, the whole thing is a d——­ rotten show.’  I’ve known him since he was a blessed baby you know, so he didn’t mind me for a minute.  Then he recollected himself, and said, yes, he would have a drink; and when he poured it out, he only sipped it, and then forgot about it, jumped up, and blurted out he had some letters to write, so I left him.  I am awfully sorry for the poor chap, I can tell you.  If it is not fate, but some caprice of hers, she deserves a jolly good beating, for making him suffer like that.”