culiarity, like the horseshoe
of the Redgauntlets, which ran in the Tancred race.

Then he felt how foolish he was, causing himself suffering over an
imaginary thing; and here this piece of white marble sat opposite him in
cold silence, while his being was wrung! He suddenly understood
something which he had never done before, when he read of such things
in the papers--how, passionately loving, a man could yet kill the thing
he loved.

And Zara, comforted by the telegram, "Much better again to-day," had
leisure to return to the subject which had lately begun unconsciously to
absorb her--the subject of her lord!

She wondered what made him look so stern. His nobly-cut face was as
though it were carved in stone. Just from an abstract, artistic point of
view, she told herself, she honestly admired him and his type. It was
finer than any other race could produce and she was glad she was half
English, too. The lines were so slender and yet so strong; and every
bone balanced--and the look of superb health and athletic strength.

Such must have been the young Greeks who ran in the Gymnasium at Athens,
she thought.

And then, suddenly, an intense quiver of unknown emotion rushed over
her. And if at that moment he had clasped her and kissed her, instead of
sitting there glaring into space, the rest of this story need never have
been written!

But the moment passed, and she crushed whatever it was she felt of the
dawning of love, and he dominated the uneasy suspicions of her fidelity;
and they got out of the train at Charing Cross--after their remarkable
wedding journey.

CHAPTER XXI

Francis Markrute's moral antennae upon which he prided himself informed
him that all was not as it should be between this young bride and
bridegroom. Zara seemed to have acquired in this short week even an
extra air of regal dignity, aided by her perfect clothes; and Tristram
looked stern, and less joyous and more haughty than he had done. And
they were both so deadly cold, and certainly constrained! It was not one
of the financier's habits ever to doubt himself or his deductions. They
were based upon far too sound reasoning. No, if something had gone wrong
or had not yet evolutionized it was only for the moment and need cause
no philosophical _deus ex machina_ any uneasiness.

For it was morally and physically impossible that such a perfectly
developed pair of the genus human being could live together in the bonds
of marriage, and