apart for ever, so he could safely
leave the adjusting of this puzzle to the discretion of fate.

And Zara, freed at last from eye of friend or maid, collapsed on to the
white bearskin in front of the fire again, and tried to think. So she
had been offered as a chattel and been refused! Here her spirit burnt
with humiliation. Her uncle, she knew, always had used her merely as a
pawn in some game--what game? He was not a snob; the position of uncle
to Tristram would not have tempted him alone; he never did anything
without a motive and a deep one. Could it be that he himself was in love
with Lady Ethelrida? She had been too preoccupied with her own affairs
to be struck with those of others, but now as she looked back, he had
shown an interest which was not in his general attitude towards women.
How her mother had loved him, this wonderful brother! It was her abiding
grief always, his unforgiveness,--and perhaps, although it seemed
impossible to her, Lady Ethelrida was attracted by him, too. Yes, that
must be it. It was to be connected with the family, to make his position
stronger in the Duke's eyes, that he had done this cruel thing. But,
would it have been cruel if she herself had been human and different? He
had called her from struggling and poverty, had given her this splendid
young husband, and riches and place,--no, there was nothing cruel in it,
as a calculated action. It should have given her her heart's desire. It
was she, herself, who had brought about things as they were, because of
her ignorance, that was the cruelty, to have let her go away with
Tristram, in ignorance.

Then the aspect of the case that she had been offered to him and
refused! scourged her again; then the remembrance that he had taken her,
for love. And what motive could he imagine she had had? This struck her
for the first time--how infinitely more generous he had been--for he had
not allowed, what he must have thought was pure mercenariness and desire
for position on her part to interfere with his desire for her
personally. He had never turned upon her, as she saw now he very well
could have done, and thrown this in her teeth. And then she fell to
bitter sobbing, and so at last to sleep.

And when the fire had died out, towards the gray dawn, she woke again
shivering and in mortal fright, for she had dreamed of Mirko, and that
he was being torn from her, while he played the _Chanson Triste_. Then
she grew fully awake and remembered that