own for a moment while she waited, and clenched her
hands. And all the passionate resentment her deep nature was capable of
surged up against fate, so that she looked more like the black panther
than ever, and her mood had only dwindled into a sullen smoldering
rage--while she still sat in the peculiar, concentrated attitude of an
animal waiting to spring--when Tristram opened the door, and came in.

The sight of her thus, looking so unEnglish, so barbaric, suddenly
filled him with the wild excitement of the lion hunt again. Could
anything be more diabolically attractive? he thought, and for a second,
the idea flashed across him that he would seize her to-night and treat
her as if she were the panther she looked, conquer her by force, beat
her if necessary, and then kiss her to death! Which plan, if he had
carried it out, in this case, would have been very sensible, but the
training of hundreds of years of chivalry toward women and things weaker
than himself was still in his blood. For Tristram, twenty-fourth Baron
Tancred, was no brute or sensualist, but a very fine specimen of his
fine, old race.

So, his heart beating with some uncontrollable excitement, and her heart
filled with smoldering rage, they descended the staircase, arm in arm,
to the admiration of peeping housemaids and the pride of her own maid.
And the female servants all rushed to the balustrade to get a better
view of the delightful scene which, they had heard whispered among them,
was a custom of generations in the family--that when the Lord of Wrayth
first led his lady into the state dining-room for their first dinner
alone he should kiss her before whoever was there, and bid her welcome
to her new home. And to see his lordship, whom they all thought the
handsomest young gentleman they had ever seen, kiss her ladyship, would
be a thrill of the most agreeable kind!

What would their surprise have been, could they have heard him say icily
to his bride as he descended the stairs:

"There is a stupid custom that I must kiss you as we go into the
dining-room, and give you this little golden key--a sort of ridiculous
emblem of the endowment of all the worldly goods business. The servants
are, of course, looking at us, so please don't start." Then he glanced
up and saw the rows of interested, excited faces; and that
devil-may-care, rollicking boyishness which made him so adored came over
him, and he laughed up at them, and waved his hand: and Zara's rage