feel was that Mirko was being cared for, that she was keeping her word
to her adored mother. She would fulfill to the letter her uncle's wishes
as to her suitable equipments, but beyond that she refused to think.

All the evening, when she had finished her short, solitary dinner, she
played the piano in her sitting-room, her white fingers passing from one
divine air to another, until at last she unconsciously drifted to the
_Chanson Triste_, and Mirko's words came back to her:

"There, there would be enough place for us both"--Who knows--that might
be the end of it!

And the two men heard the distant wail of the last notes as they came
out of the dining-room, and, while it made the financier uncomfortable,
it caused Tristram a sharp stab of pain.

CHAPTER XI

The next three weeks passed for Lord Tancred in continuously growing
excitement. He had much business to see to for the reopening of Wrayth
which had been closed for the past two years. He had decided to let Zara
choose her own rooms, and decorate them as she pleased, when she should
get there. But the big state apartments, with their tapestry and
pictures, would remain untouched.

It gave him infinite pleasure--the thought of living at his old house
once again--and it touched him to see the joy of the village and all the
old keepers and gardeners who had been pensioned off! He found himself
wondering all sorts of things--if he would have a son some day soon, to
inherit it all. Each wood and broad meadow seemed to take on new
interest and significance from this thought.

His home was so very dear to him though he had drilled himself into a
seeming indifference. The great, round tower of the original Norman keep
was still there, connected with the walls of the later house, a large,
wandering edifice built at all periods from that epoch upwards, and
culminating in a shocking early-Victorian Gothic wing and porch.

"I think we shall pull that wretched bit down some time," he said to
himself. "Zara must have good taste--she could not look so well in her
clothes, if she had not."

His thoughts were continually for her, and what she would be likely to
wish; and, in the evening, when he sat alone in his own sanctum after a
hard day with electricians and work-people, he would gaze into the
blazing logs and dream.

The new electric light was not installed yet, and only the big, old
lamps lit the shadowy oak panelling. There in a niche beside the
fireplace