deeper estrangement in their hearts. And when Tristram was ready
to-night, he went out into the corridor and pretended to look at the
pictures. He would have no more servants' messages!--and there he was,
with a bitter smile on his face, when Lady Anningford, coming from her
room beyond, stopped to talk. She wondered at his being there--a very
different state of things to her own with her dear old man, she
remembered, who, after the wedding day, for weeks and weeks would hardly
let her out of his sight!

Then Henriette peeped out of the door and saw that the message she was
being sent upon was in vain, and went back; and immediately Zara
appeared.

Her dress was pale gray to-night--with her uncle's pearls--and both Lady
Anningford and Tristram noticed that her eyes were slumberous and had in
them that smoldering fierceness of pain. And remembering the Crow's
appeal Lady Anningford slipped her hand within her arm, and was very
gentle and friendly as they went down to the saloon.

CHAPTER XXVI

Now if the evening passed with pain and unrest for the bride and
bridegroom, it had quite another aspect for Francis Markrute and Lady
Ethelrida! He was not placed by his hostess to-night at dinner, but when
the power of manipulating circumstances with skill is in a man, and the
desire to make things easy to be manipulated is in a woman, they can
spend agreeable and numerous moments together.

So it fell about that without any apparent or pointed detachment from
her other guests Lady Ethelrida was able to sit in one of the embrasures
of the windows in, the picture gallery, whither the party had migrated
to-night, and talk to her interesting new friend--for that he was growing
into a friend she felt. He seemed so wonderfully understanding, and was
so quiet and subtle and undemonstrative, and, underneath, you could feel
his power and strength.

It had been his insidious suggestion, spread among the company, which
had caused them to be in the picture gallery to-night, instead of in one
of the great drawing-rooms. For in a very long narrow room it was much
easier to separate people, he felt.

"Of course this was not built at the time the house was, in about 1670,"
Lady Ethelrida said. "It was added by the second Duke, who was
Ambassador to Versailles in the time of Louis XV, and who thought he
would like a 'galerie des glaces' in imitation of the one there. And
then, when the walls were up, he died, and it was not decorat