she felt she could not bear that.

The music talked to her: what was her life going to be? What if, in the
end, she could not control her love? What if it should break down her
pride, and let him see that she regretted her past action and only
longed to be in his arms. For her admiration and respect for him were
growing each hour, as she discovered new traits in him, individually,
and began to understand what he meant to all these people whose lord he
was. How little she had known of England, her own father's country! How
ridiculously little she had really known of men, counting them all
brutes like Ladislaus and his friends, or feckless fools like poor
Mimo! What an impossible attitude was this one she had worn always of
arrogant ignorance! Something should have told her that these people
were not like that. Something should have warned her, when she first saw
him, that Tristram was a million miles above anything in the way of his
sex that she had yet known. Then she stopped playing, and deliberately
went over and looked in the glass. Yes, she was certainly beautiful, and
quite young. She might live until she were seventy or eighty, in the
natural course of events, and the whole of life would be one long,
dreary waste if she might not have her Love. After all, pride was not
worth so very much. Suppose she were very gentle to him, and tried to
please him in just a friendly way, that would not be undignified nor
seem to be throwing herself at his head. She would begin to-morrow, if
she could. Then she remembered Lady Ethelrida's words at the dinner
party--was it possible that was only three weeks ago this very
night--the words that she had spoken so unconsciously, when she had
showed so plainly the family feeling about Tristram and Cyril being the
last in the male line of Tancred of Wrayth. She remembered how she had
been angered and up in arms then, and now a whole education had passed
over her, and she fully understood and sympathized with their point of
view.

And at this stage of her meditations her eyes grew misty as they gazed
into distance, and all soft; and the divine expression of the Sistine
Madonna grew in them, as it grew always when she held Mirko in her arms.

Yes, there were things in life which mattered far, far more than pride.
And so, comforted by her resolutions, she at last went to bed.

And Tristram sat alone by the fire in his own sitting-room, and stared
at that other Tristram Guiscard's armor.