The French maid, full of sympathy and excitement, wondered, while she turned on the taps, how Miladi should look so disdainful and calm.

“Mon Dieu! if Milor was my Raoul!  I would be far otherwise,” she thought to herself, as she poured in the scent.

At a quarter to the hour of dinner she was still silently brushing her mistress’s long, splendid, red hair, while Zara stared into the glass in front of her, with sightless eyes and face set.  She was back in Bournemouth, and listening to “Maman’s air.”  It haunted her and rang in her head; and yet, underneath, a wild excitement coursed in her blood.

A knock then came to the door, and when Henrietta answered it Tristram passed her by and stepped into his lady’s room.

Zara turned round like a startled fawn, and then her expression changed to one of anger and hauteur.

He was already dressed for dinner, and held a great bunch of gardenias in his hand.  He stopped abruptly when he caught sight of the exquisite picture she made, and he drew in his breath.  He had not known hair could be so long; he had not realized she was so beautiful.  And she was his wife!

“Darling!” he gasped, oblivious of even the maid, who had the discretion to retire quickly to the bathroom beyond.  “Darling, how beautiful you are!  You drive me perfectly mad.”

Zara held on to the dressing-table and almost crouched, like a panther ready to spring.

“How dare you come into my room like this!  Go!” she said.

It was as if she had struck him.  He drew back, and flung the flowers down into the grate.

“I only came to tell you dinner was nearly ready,” he said haughtily, “and to bring you those.  But I will await you in the sitting-room, when you are dressed.”

And he turned round and left through the door by which he had come.

And Zara called her maid rather sharply, and had her hair plaited and done, and got quickly into her dress.  And when she was ready she went slowly into the sitting-room.

She found Tristram leaning upon the mantelpiece, glaring moodily into the flames.  He had stood thus for ten minutes, coming to a decision in his mind.

He had been very angry just now, and he thought was justified; but he knew he was passionately in love, as he had never dreamed nor imagined he could be in the whole of his life.

Should he tell her at once about it? and implore her not to be so cold and hard?  But no, that would be degrading.  After all, he had already shown her a proof of the most reckless devotion, in asking to marry her, after having seen her only once!  And she, what had her reasons been?  They were forcible enough or she would not have consented to her uncle’s wishes before they had even ever met; and he recalled, when he had asked her only on Thursday last if she would wish to be released, that she had said firmly that she wished the marriage to take place.  Surely she must know that no man with any spirit would put up with such treatment as this—­to be spoken to as though he had been an impudent stranger bursting into her room!