Her head then drooped a little; her interest now seemed only mechanical, as she answered again, “Yes” and “No.”

Lord Tancred wondered and wondered; he saw that her thoughts were far away.

Francis Markrute had been watching things minutely while he kept up his suave small talk with Colonel Macnamara on his right hand.  He was well pleased with the turn of events.  After all, nothing could have been better than Zara’s being late.  Circumstance often played into the hand of an experienced manipulator like himself.  Now if she only kept up this attitude of indifference, which, indeed, she seemed likely to do—­she was no actress, he knew—­things might be settled this very night.

Lord Tancred could not get her to have a single continued conversation for the remainder of dinner; he was perfectly raging with annoyance, his fighting blood was up.  And when at the first possible moment after the dessert arrived she swept from the room, her eyes met his as he held the door and they were again full of contemptuous hate.

He returned to his seat with his heart actually thumping in his side.

And all through the laborious conversation upon Canada and how best to invest capital, which Francis Markrute with great skill and apparently hearty friendship prolonged to its utmost limits, he felt the attraction and irritation of the woman grow and grow.  He no longer took the slightest interest in the pros and cons of his future in the Colony, and when, at last, he heard the distant tones of Tschaikovsky’s Chanson Triste as they ascended the stairs he came suddenly to a determination.  She was sitting at the grand piano in the back part of the room.  A huge, softly shaded lamp shed its veiled light upon her white face and rounded throat; her hands and arms, which showed to the elbow, seemed not less pale than the ivory keys, and those disks of black velvet gazed in front of them, a whole world of anguish in their depths.

For this was the tune that her mother had loved, and she was playing it to remind herself of her promise and to keep herself firm in her determination to accept the bargain, for her little brother Mirko’s sake.

She glanced at Lord Tancred as he entered.  Count Ladislaus Shulski had been a very handsome man, too.  She did not know enough of the English type to judge of Lord Tancred morally.  She only saw that he was a splendid, physical creature who would be strong—­and horrible probably—­like the rest.

The whole expression of her face changed as he came and leaned upon the piano.  The sorrow died out of her eyes and was replaced by a fierce defiance; and her fingers broke into a tarantella of wild sounds.

“You strange woman!” Lord Tancred said.

“Am I strange?” she answered through her teeth.  “It is said by those who know that we are all mad—­at some time and at some point.  I have, I think, reason to be mad to-night.”  And with that she crashed a final chord, rose from her seat, and crossed the room.