ed until
thirty-five years later, in the Regent's time, and it was turned into a
picture gallery then."

"People's brands of individuality in their houses are so interesting,"
Francis Markrute said. "I believe Wrayth is a series of human fancies,
from the Norman Castle upwards, is it not? I have never been there."

"Oh! Wrayth is much more interesting than this," she answered. "Parts of
it are so wonderfully old; there are stone floors in the upper rooms in
one of the inner courtyards. They did not suffer, you see, from the
hateful Puritans, because the then Tancred was only an infant when the
civil war began; and his mother was a Frenchwoman, and they stayed in
France all the time, and only came back when Charles II returned. He
married a Frenchwoman, too. She was a wonderful person and improved many
things. Wrayth has two long galleries and a chapel of Henry the
Seventh's time, and numbers of staircases in unexpected places, and then
a fine suite of state rooms, built on by Adam, and then the most awful
Early-Victorian imitation Gothic wing and porch which one of those
dreadful people, who spoilt such numbers of places, added in 1850."

"It sounds wonderful," said the financier.

"Lots of it is very shabby, of course, because Tristram's father was
always very hard up; and nothing much had been done either in the
grandfather's time--except the horrible wing. But with enough money to
get it right again, I cannot imagine anything more lovely than it could
be."

"It will be a great amusement to them in the coming year to do it all,
then. Zara has the most beautiful taste, Lady Ethelrida. When you know
her better I think you will like my niece."

"But I do now," she exclaimed. "Only I do wish she did not look so sad.
May I ask it because of our bargain? "--and she paused with gentle
timidity--"Will you tell me?--do you know of any special reason to-day
to make her unhappy? I saw her face at dinner to-night, and all the
while she talked there was an anxious, haunted look in her eyes."

Francis Markrute frowned for a moment; he had been too absorbed in his
own interests to have taken in anything special about his niece. If
there were something of the sort in her eyes it could only have one
source--anxiety about the health of the boy Mirko. He himself had not
heard anything. Then his lightning calculations decided him to tell Lady
Ethelrida nothing of this. Zara's anxiety would mean the child's
illness, and illness, D