And as they found the others he thought to himself, "Well, men may be poachers like I am, but I am hanged if they are such weasels as women!"

Lady Anningford joined Lady Ethelrida that night in her room, after they had seen Zara to hers, and they began at once upon the topic which was thrilling them all.

"There is something the matter, Ethelrida, darling," Lady Anningford said. "I have talked to Tristram for a long time to-night, and, although he was bravely trying to hide it, he was bitterly miserable; spoke recklessly of life one minute, and resignedly the next; and then asked me, with an air as if in an abstract discussion, whether Hector and Theodora were really happy--because she had been a widow. And when I said, 'Yes, ideally so,' and that they never want to be dragged away from Bracondale, he said, so awfully sadly, 'Oh, I dare-say; but then they have children.' It is too pitiful to hear him, after only a week!

What can it be? What can have happened in the time?"

"It is not since, Anne," Ethelrida said, beginning to unfasten her dress. "It was always like that. She had just the look in her eyes the night we all first met her, at Mr. Markrute's at dinner--that strange, angry, pained, sorrowful look, as though she were a furnace of resentment against some fate. I remember an old colored picture we had on a screen--it is now in the housekeeper's room--it was one of those badly-drawn, lurid scenes of prisoners being dragged off to Siberia in the snow, and there was a woman in it who had just been separated from her husband and baby and who had exactly the same expression. It used to haunt me as a child, and Mamma had it taken out of the old nursery. And Zara's eyes haunt me now in the same way."

"She never had any children, I suppose?" asked Lady Anningford.

"Never that I heard of--and she is so young; only twenty-three now."

"Well, it is too tragic! And what is to be done? Can't you ask the uncle? He must know."

"I did, to-night, Anne--and he answered, so strangely, that 'yes, there was something which at times troubled her, but it would pa.s.s.'"

"Good gracious!" said Anne. "It can't be a hallucination. She is not crazy, is she? That would be worse than anything."

"Oh, no!" cried Ethelrida, aghast. "It is not that in the least, thank goodness!"

"Then perhaps there are some terrible scenes, connected with her first husband's murder, which she can't forget. The Crow told me Count Shulski was shot at Monte Carlo, in a fray of some sort."

"That must be it, of course!" said Ethelrida, much relieved. "Then she will get over it in time. And surely Tristram will be able to make her love him, and forget them. I do feel better about it now, Anne, and shall be able to sleep in peace."

So they said good night, and separated--comforted.

But the object of their solicitude did not attempt to get into her bed when she had dismissed her maid. She sat down in one of the big gilt William-and-Mary armchairs, and clasped her hands tightly, and tried to think.

Things were coming to a crisis with her. Destiny had given her another cross to bear, for suddenly this evening, as the Duke spoke of his wife, she had become conscious of the truth about herself: she was in love with her husband. And she herself had made it impossible that he could ever come back to her. For, indeed, the tables were turned, with one of those ironical twists of Fate.

And she questioned herself--Why did she love him? She had reproached him on her wedding night, when he had told her he loved her, because in her ignorance she felt then it could only be a question of sense. She had called him an animal! she remembered; and now she had become an animal herself! For she could prove no loftier motive for her emotion towards him than he had had for her then: they knew one another no better. It had not been possible for her pa.s.sion to have arisen from the reasons she remembered having hurled at him as the only ones from which true love could spring, namely, knowledge, and tenderness, and devotion. It was all untrue; she understood it now. Love--deep and tender--could leap into being from the glance of an eye.

They were strangers to each other still, and yet this cruel, terrible thing called love had broken down all the barriers in her heart, melted the disdainful ice, and turned it to fire. She felt she wanted to caress him, and take away the stern, hard look from his face. She wanted to be gentle, and soft, and loving--to feel that she belonged to him. And she pa.s.sionately longed for him to kiss her and clasp her to his heart.

Whether he had consented originally to marry her for her uncle's money or not, was a matter, now, of no further importance. He had loved her after he had seen her, at all events, and she had thrown it all away.

Nothing but a man's natural jealousy of his possessions remained.

"Oh, why did I not know what I was doing!" she moaned to herself, as she rocked in the chair. "I must have been very wicked in some former life, to be so tortured in this!"

But it was too late now. She had burnt her ships, and nothing remained to her but her pride. Since she had thrown away joy she could at least keep that and never let him see how she was being punished.

And to-night it was her turn to look in anguish at the closed door, and to toss in restless pain of soul, on her bed.

CHAPTER XXVII

A bombsh.e.l.l, in the shape of Lady Betty Burns, burst into the bedroom of Emily and Mary next morning, while the two girls were sitting up in their great bed at about eight o'clock, reading their letters and sipping their tea.

"May I come in, darlings?" a voice full of purpose said, and a flaxen head peeped in.

"Why, Betty, of course!" both girls answered and, in a blue silk dressing-gown and a long fair plait of hair hanging down, Lady Betty stalked in.

None of the Council of Three, going to deliver secret sentence, could have advanced with more dignity or consciousness of the solemnity of the occasion. Emily and Mary were thrilled.

"Be prepared!" she said dramatically, while she climbed to the foot of the bed and sat down. "It is just what I told you. She's been the heroine of a murder--if she did not do it herself!"

"Heavens! Betty, who?" almost screamed the girls.

"Your sister-in-law! I had to come at once to tell you, darlings. Last night, Aunt Muriel (the young Lady Melton was her uncle's second wife and chaperoning her to the party) would drag me into her room, and I could not get to you. You would have been asleep when I at last escaped, so I determined to come the first thing this morning and tell you my news."

Four round eyes of excited horror fixed themselves upon her, so with deep importance of voice and manner, Lady Betty went on:

"I sat with Captain Hume in the picture gallery, just before we went to bed. Believe me, I have not been able to sleep all night from it, dears!

Well, we had been speaking of that fighting scene by Teniers in a beer house, you know, the one which hangs by the big Snuyders. The moon--no, it could not have been the moon. It must have been the arc light over the entrance which shines in from the angle. Anyway, it felt as if it were the moon, when I drew aside the blind; and it struck my heart with a cold foreboding, as he said such things, fights, happened now sometimes, and he was at Monte Carlo when Count Shulski was shot; and, though it was hushed up by the authorities and no one hardly heard of it much, still it made a stir. And," continued Lady Betty, now rising majestically and pointing an accusing forefinger at Emily and Mary, "Countess Shulski was your sister-in-law's name!"

"Oh, hush, Betty!" said Emily, almost angrily. "You must not say such things. There might have been a lot of Count Shulskis. Foreigners are all counts."

But Lady Betty shook her head with tragic sorrow and dignity, much at variance with her sweet little childish turned-up nose.

"Alas, darlings, far be it from me to bring the terrible conviction home to you!" Great occasions like this required a fine style, she felt. "Far be it from me! But Captain Hume went on to say, that, of course, was the reason of Lady Tancred's dreadfully mysterious and remorseful look."

"It is perfectly impossible, Betty," Mary cried excitedly. "But even if her husband were shot, it does not prove she had anything to do with it."

"Of course it does!" said Lady Betty, forgetting for a moment her style.

"There's always a scene of jealousy, in which the husband stabs the other man, and then falls dead himself. Unless," and this new bright thought came to her, "she were a political spy!"

"Oh, Betty!" they both exclaimed at once. And then Emily said gravely,

"Please do tell us exactly what Captain Hume really said. Remember, it is our brother's wife you are speaking of, not one of the heroines in your plays!"

Thus admonished, Lady Betty got back on to the bed, and gradually came down to facts, which were meager enough. For Captain Hume had instantly pulled himself up, it appeared; and he had merely said that, as her first husband had been killed in a row, Lady Tancred had cause to have tragedy imprinted upon her face.

"Betty, dearest," Emily then said, "please, please don't tell anything of your exciting story to any one else, will you? Because people are so unkind."

At this, Lady Betty bounced off again offendedly.

"You are an ungrateful pair," she flashed. "Before I brave meeting Jimmy Danvers in the pa.s.sage again, in my dressing-gown, to come and tell you delicious things, I'll be hanged!"

And it was with difficulty that Emily and Mary mollified her, and got her to re-seat herself on the bed and have a bit of their bread-and-b.u.t.ter. She had fled to announce her thrilling news before her own tea had come.

"I do think men look perfectly horrid with their hair unbrushed in the morning, don't you, Em?" she said, presently, as she munched, while Mary poured her out some tea into the emptied sugar-basin and handed it to her. "Henry's fortunate, because his is curly"--Here Mary blushed--"and I believe Jimmy Danvers gets his valet to glue his down before he goes to bed. But you should see what Aunt Muriel has to put up with, when Uncle Aubrey comes in to talk to her, while I am there. The front, anyhow, and a lock sticking up in the back! There is one thing I am determined about. Before I'm married, I shall insist upon knowing how my husband stands the morning light."

"I thought you said just now Jimmy's was quite decent and glued down,"

Emily retorted slyly.

"Pouff!" said Lady Betty, with superb calm. "I have not made up my mind at all about Jimmy. He is dying to ask me, I know; but there is Bobby Harland, too. However, this morning--"