It gave him infinite pleasure—­the thought of living at his old house once again—­and it touched him to see the joy of the village and all the old keepers and gardeners who had been pensioned off!  He found himself wondering all sorts of things—­if he would have a son some day soon, to inherit it all.  Each wood and broad meadow seemed to take on new interest and significance from this thought.

His home was so very dear to him though he had drilled himself into a seeming indifference.  The great, round tower of the original Norman keep was still there, connected with the walls of the later house, a large, wandering edifice built at all periods from that epoch upwards, and culminating in a shocking early-Victorian Gothic wing and porch.

“I think we shall pull that wretched bit down some time,” he said to himself.  “Zara must have good taste—­she could not look so well in her clothes, if she had not.”

His thoughts were continually for her, and what she would be likely to wish; and, in the evening, when he sat alone in his own sanctum after a hard day with electricians and work-people, he would gaze into the blazing logs and dream.

The new electric light was not installed yet, and only the big, old lamps lit the shadowy oak panelling.  There in a niche beside the fireplace was the suit of armor which another Tristram Guiscard had worn at Agincourt.  What little chaps they had been in those days in comparison with himself and his six feet two inches!  But they had been great lords, his ancestors, and he, too, would be worthy of the race.  There were no wars just now to go to and fight for his country—­but he would fight for his order, with his uncle, the Duke, that splendid, old specimen of the hereditary legislator.  Francis Markrute who was a good judge had said that he had made some decent speeches in the House of Lords already, and he would go on and do his best, and Zara would help him.  He wondered if she liked reading and poetry.  He was such a magnificently healthy sportsman he had always been a little shy of letting people know his inner and gentler tastes.  He hoped so much she would care for the books he did.  There was a deep strain of romance in his nature, undreamed of by such women as Laura Highford, and these evenings—­alone, musing and growing in love with a phantom—­drew it forth.

His plan was to go to Paris—­to the Ritz—­for the honeymoon.  Zara who did not know England would probably hate the solemn servants staring at her in those early days if he took her to Orton, one of the Duke’s places which he had offered him for the blissful week.  Paris was much better—­they could go to the theater there—­because he knew it would not all be plain sailing by any means!  And every time he thought of that aspect, his keen, blue eyes sparkled with the instinct of the chase and he looked the image of the Baron Tancred who, carved in stone, with his Crusader’s crossed feet, reposed in state in the church of Wrayth.