Presently, he took her hand again and placed it on his arm, as they walked through the long corridor, to the splendid hall, built by the brothers Adam, with its stately staircase to the gallery above.

“I have prepared the state rooms for your ladyship, pending your ladyship’s choice of your own,” Mrs. Anglin said.  “Here is the boudoir, the bedroom, the bathroom, and his lordship’s dressing-room—­all en suite—­and I hope your ladyship will find them as handsome, as we old servants of the family think they are!”

And Zara came up to the scratch and made a charming little speech.

When they got to the enormous bedroom, with its windows looking out on the French garden and park, all in exquisite taste, furnished and decorated by the Adams themselves, Tristram gallantly bent and kissed her hand, as he said: 

“I will wait for you in the boudoir, while you take off your coat.  Mrs. Anglin will show you the toilet-service of gold, which was given by Louis XIV to a French grandmother and which the Ladies Tancred always use, when they are at Wrayth.  I hope you won’t find the brushes too hard,” and he laughed and went out.

And Zara, overcome with the state and beauty and tradition of it all, sat down upon the sofa for a moment to try to control her pain.  She was throbbing with rage and contempt at herself, at the remembrance that she, in her ignorance, her ridiculous ignorance, had insulted this man—­this noble gentleman, who owned all these things—­and had taunted him with taking her for her uncle’s wealth.

How he must have loved her in the beginning to have been willing to give her all this, after seeing her for only one night.  She writhed with anguish.  There is no bitterness as great as the bitterness of loss caused by oneself.

Tristram was standing by the window of the delicious boudoir when she went in.  Zara, who as yet knew very little of English things, admired the Adam style; and when Mrs. Anglin left them discreetly for a moment, she told him so, timidly, for something to say.

“Yes, it is rather nice,” he said stiffly, and then went on:  “We shall have to go down now to this fearful lunch, but you had better take your sable boa with you.  The great hall is so enormous and all of stone, it may be cold.  I will get it for you,” and he went back and found it lying by her coat on the chair, and brought it, and wrapped it round her casually, as if she had been a stone, and then held the door for her to go out.  And Zara’s pride was stung, even though she knew he was doing exactly as she herself would have done, so that instead of the meek attitude she had unconsciously assumed, for a moment now she walked beside him with her old mien of head in the air, to the admiration of Mrs. Anglin, who watched them descend the stairs.

“She is as haughty-looking as our own ladyship,” she thought to herself.  “I wonder how his lordship likes that!”