ght, as from an oak bench she watched them all busy as bees over
their preparations for the repast. She had helped to make a salad, and
now sat with the Crow, and surveyed the rest.

Jimmy Danvers had turned up his sleeves and was thoroughly in earnest
over his part; and he and Young Billy had gathered some brown bracken,
and put it sprouting from a ham, to represent, they said, the peacock.
For, they explained, a banquet in a baronial hall had to have a peacock,
as well as a boar's head, and an ox roasted whole!

And suddenly Zara thought of her last picnic, with Mimo and Mirko in the
Neville Street attic, when the poor little one had worn the paper cap,
and had taken such pleasure in the new rosy cups. And the Crow who was
watching her closely, wondered why this gay scene should make the lovely
bride look so pitifully sad. "How _Maman_ would have loved all this!"
she was thinking, "with her gay, tender soul, and her delight in
make-believe and joyous picnics." And her father--he had known all these
sorts of people; they were his own class, and yet he had come to live in
the great, gloomy castle, out of his own land, and expected his
exquisite, young wife to stay there alone, most of the time. The hideous
cruelty of men!

And there was her Uncle Francis, in quite a new character!--helping Lady
Ethelrida to lay the table, as happily as a boy. Would she herself ever
be happy, she wondered, ever have a time free from some agonizing strain
or care? And then, from sorrow her expression changed to one of strange
slumberous resentment at fate.

"Queen Anne," said the Crow, as they sat down to luncheon, "there is
some tragedy hanging over that young woman. She has been suffering like
the devil for at least ten minutes, and forgot I was even beside her and
pretending to talk. You and Lady Ethelrida have two not altogether
unkind hearts. Can't you find out what it is, and comfort her?"

CHAPTER XXV

After luncheon, which had been carried through with all the proper
ceremonies of the olden time according to Jimmy Danvers and Young
Billy's interpretation of them, it came on to pour with rain; so these
masters of the revels said that now the medieval dances should begin,
and accordingly they turned on the gramophone that stood in the corner
to amuse the children at the school treats. And Mary and her admirer,
Lord Henry Burns, and Emily and a Captain Hume, and Lady Betty and Jimmy
Danvers, gayly took the floor, while Yo