m the epistle she carried in her hand. It ran:

"MY DEAR NIECE:

"I have to inform you of a piece of news that is a great gratification
to myself, and I trust will cause you, too, some pleasure.

"Lady Ethelrida Montfitchet has done me the honor to accept my proposal
for her hand, and the Duke, her father, has kindly given his hearty
consent to my marriage with his daughter, which is to take place as soon
as things can be arranged with suitability. I hope you and Tristram will
arrive in time to accompany me to dinner at Glastonbury House on Friday
evening, when you can congratulate my beloved fiance, who holds you in
affectionate regard.

"I am, my dear niece, always your devoted uncle,

"FRANCIS MARKRUTE."

When Tristram finished reading he exclaimed:

"Good Lord!" For, quite absorbed in his own affairs, he had never even
noticed the financier's peregrinations! Then as he looked at the letter
again he said meditatively:

"I expect they will be awfully happy--Ethelrida is such an unselfish,
sensible, darling girl--"

And it hurt Zara even in her present mood, for she felt the contrast to
herself in his unconscious tone.

"My uncle never does anything without having calculated it will turn out
perfectly," she said bitterly--"only sometimes it can happen that he
plays with the wrong pawns."

And Tristram wondered what she meant. He and she had certainly been
pawns in one of the Markrute games, and now he began to see this object,
just as Zara had done. Then the thought came to him.--Why should he not
now ask her straight out--why she had married him? It was not from any
desire for himself, nor his position, he knew that: but for what?

So, the moment the servants went out of the room to get the
coffee--after a desultory conversation about the engagement until then,
he said coldly:

"You told me on Monday that you now know the reason I had married you:
may I ask you why did you marry me?"

She clasped her hands convulsively. This brought it all back--her poor
little brother--and she was not free yet from her promise to her uncle:
she never failed to keep her word.

A look of deep, tragic earnestness grew in her pools of ink, and she
said to him, with a strange sob in her voice:

"Believe me I had a strong reason, but I cannot tell it to you now."

And the servants reentered the room at the moment, so he could not ask
her why: it broke the current.

But what an unexpected inference she always put in