other days.
It was in the schoolhouse at Wrayth, where the buxom girl who had been
assistant mistress, and had married, a year before, brought her
first-born son to show the lord and lady--as he had been born on their
wedding day, just a fortnight ago! She was pale and wan, but so
ecstatically proud and happy looking; and Tristram at once said,
they--he and Zara--must be the god-parents of her boy; and Zara held the
crimson, crumpled atom for a moment, and then looked up and met her
husband's eyes, and saw that they had filled with tears. And she
returned the creature to its mother--but she could not speak, for a
moment.

And finally they had come home again--home to Wrayth--and no more
unhappy pair of young, healthy people lived on earth.

Zara could hardly contain her impatience to see if a telegram for her
from Mimo had come in her absence. Tristram saw her look of anxiety and
strain, and smiled grimly to himself. She would get no answering
telegram from her lover that day!

And, worn out with the whole thing, Zara turned to him and asked if it
would matter or look unusual if she said--what was true--that she was so
fatigued she would like to go to bed and not have to come down to
dinner.

"I will not do so, if it would not be in the game," she said.

And he answered, shortly:

"The game is over, to-night: do as you please."

So she went off sadly, and did not see him again until they were ready
to start in the morning--the Friday morning, which Tristram called the
beginning of the end!

He had arranged that they should go by train, and not motor up, as he
usually did because he loved motoring; but the misery of being so close
to her, even now when he hoped he loathed and despised her, was too
great to chance. So, early after lunch, they started, and would be at
Park Lane after five. No telegram had come for Zara--Mimo must be
away--but, in any case, it indicated nothing unusual was happening,
unless he had been called to Bournemouth by Mirko himself and had left
hurriedly. This idea so tortured her that by the time she got to London
she could not bear it, and felt she must go to Neville Street and see.
But how to get away?

Francis Markrute was waiting for them in the library, and seemed so full
of the exuberance of happiness that she could not rush off until she had
poured out and pretended to enjoy a lengthy tea.

And the change in the reserved man struck them both. He seemed years
younger, and full