It had been too impossibly wet to go on, and they had
sent the ladies back in the motors and had come across the park on their
way home, and, hearing the sound of music, had glanced in. Tristram was
in front of the intruders and just chanced to catch his bride's look at
her partner, before either of them saw they were observed.

He felt frightfully jealous. He had never before seen her so smiling, to
begin with, and never at all at himself. He longed to kick Arthur
Elterton! Confounded impertinence!--And what tommyrot--dancing like
this, in the afternoon with boots on! And when they all stopped and
greeted the shooters, and crowded round the fire, he said, in a tone of
rasping sarcasm--in reply to Jimmy Danvers' announcement that they were
back in the real life of a castle in the Middle Ages:

"Any one can see that! You have even got My Lady's fool. Look at
Arthur--with mud on his boots--jumping about!"

And Lord Elterton felt very flattered. He knew his old friend was
jealous, and if he were jealous then the charming, cold lady must have
been unbelievingly nice to him, and that meant he was getting on!

"You are jealous because your lovely bride prefers me, Young Lochinvar,"
and he laughed as he quoted:

"'For so faithful in love and so dauntless in war--
There ne'er was a gallant like Young Lochinvar!'"

And Zara saw that Tristram's eyes flashed blue steel, and that he did
not like the chaff at all. So, just out of some contrariness--he had
been with Lady Highford all day so why should she not amuse herself,
too; indeed, why should either of them care what the other did--so just
out of contrariness she smiled again at Lord Elterton and said:

"'Then tread we a measure, my Lord Lochinvar.'"

And off they went.

And Tristram, with his face more set than the Crusader ancestor's in
Wrayth Church, said to his uncle, Lord Charles, "We are all wet through:
let us come along."

And he turned round and went out.

And as he walked, he wondered to himself how much she must know of
English poetry to have been able to answer Arthur like that. If only
they could be friends and talk of the books he, too, loved! And then he
realized more strongly than ever the impossibility of the situation--he,
who had been willing to undertake it with the joyous self-confidence
with which he had started upon a lion hunt!

He felt he was getting to the end of his tether; it could not go on. Her
words that night at Dover