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"Yes, as I was saying, things are vastly changed since I brought Ethelrida's dear mother back here, after our honeymoon! a month in those days! I would have punched any other young blood's head, who had even looked at her! And you philander off with that fluffy, little empty-pate, Laura, and Arthur Elterton makes love to your bride! A pretty state of things, 'pon my soul!"
But I have had time to read a good deal " and then Zara stopped. It was so against her habit to give personal information to any one like this. Lord Elterton saw the little check, and went on another tack. "I have been an idle fellow and am not at all learned," he said.
And Mary and her admirer, Lord Henry Burns, and Emily and a Captain Hume, and Lady Betty and Jimmy Danvers, gayly took the floor, while Young Billy offered himself to the bride, as he said he as the representative of the Lord of the Castle had a right to the loveliest lady; and, with his young, stolid self-confidence, he pushed Lord Elterton aside.
"I did just give him a hint." "That was wise." And Lord Elterton smiled blandly and she did not see the twinkle in his eye. "He was naturally grateful?" he asked sympathetically. "Not now, perhaps, but some day he will be!" Laura's light hazel eyes flashed, and Lord Elterton laughed again as he answered lightly,
"I shall be there," he said, and once again he looked into her sweet, gray eyes; and she rose with a slightly faster movement than usual and drew him to where there were more of her guests. Meanwhile Lord Elterton was losing no time in his pursuit of Zara.
"You will have lots of chance before a year is out, Arthur," she said with a bitter smile. "You need not be in such a hurry! That marriage won't last more than a few months they hate each other already." "You don't say so!" said Lord Elterton, feigning innocence. "I thought they were a most devoted couple!"
Zara had been unable to resist the current of light-hearted gayety which was in the air, and now felt considerably better; so she allowed Lord Elterton to sit beside her after tea and pour homage at her feet, with the expression of an empress listening to an address of loyalty from some distant colony; and the Crow leant back in his chair and chuckled to himself, much to Lady Anningford's annoyance.
And when they all stopped and greeted the shooters, and crowded round the fire, he said, in a tone of rasping sarcasm in reply to Jimmy Danvers' announcement that they were back in the real life of a castle in the Middle Ages: "Any one can see that! You have even got My Lady's fool. Look at Arthur with mud on his boots jumping about!" And Lord Elterton felt very flattered.
They are my pets; and I don't consider they have spent at all a suitable honeymoon Sunday afternoon Tristram, with a headache in the smoking-room, and the bride, taking a walk and being made love to by Arthur Elterton, and Young Billy, alternately. The kid is as wild about her as Tristram himself, I believe!"
And then she had turned round, and seemed confused at seeing her Zara and gushed more than the night before. But she did not get the satisfaction of perceiving the bride turn a hair, though as Zara walked on to the end of the room she angrily found herself wondering who was this woman, and what had she been to Tristram? What was she now? Lord Elterton had already fallen in love.
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