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Updated: June 1, 2025
Markrute had never heard anything about the silly affair between her cousin and Lady Highford what would he think! What might she not have done! "That won't matter," he said, with his fine smile. "It will be good for my niece. I meant something quite different." But what he meant, he would not say. And so the evening passed smoothly.
Laura Highford, left alone with Lord Elterton up at the end of the long picture gallery, felt she must throw off some steam. She could not keep from the subject which was devouring her; she knew now she had made an irreparable mistake in what she had said to Tristram in the afternoon, and how to repair it she did not know at present, but she must talk to some one.
For just as she had come into the saloon where some of the party were writing letters that morning she had heard Lady Highford say to Mrs. Harcourt, in her high voice, "Yes, indeed, we mean to finish the discussion this afternoon after luncheon. Dear Tristram! There is a long wait at the Fulton beat; we shall have plenty of time alone."
There seemed no improvement in the relations of the pair, in spite of Zara having had ample cause to feel jealous about Lady Highford since their arrival. Elinka, too, had had strange and unreasonable turns in her nature, that is what had made her so attractive. What if Zara and this really fine young Englishman, with whom he had mated her, should never get on?
"Absolutely in a nutshell, dear lady," Francis Markrute said, and for a minute he looked into her eyes with such respectful, intense admiration that Lady Ethelrida looked away. In the white drawing-room, afterwards, Lady Highford was particularly gushing to the new bride. She came with a group of other women to surround her, and was so playful and charming to all her friends!
Lady Highford crumbled her bread and then turned to the Duke there was nothing further to be got out of this quarter. Finally luncheon came to an end, and the three ladies went up to Ethelrida's sitting-room. Mrs. Radcliffe presently took her leave to catch a train, so the two were left alone. "I am so looking forward to your party, dear Ethelrida," Lady Highford cooed.
But this was not what Lady Highford had come for. She wanted to hear everything she could about her rival, in order to lay her plans; and the moment Ethelrida was engaged with the politician and the Duke had turned to Mrs. Radcliffe, she tackled the cousin, in a lower voice. He, Jimmy Danvers, had only read what she had, that morning.
He could not offer a single explanation, either; indeed, she had demanded none. He did blurt out, after a moment, "Lady Highford was very much upset about something. She is hysterical." "Poor thing!" said Zara indifferently, and walked on. But when they got into the hall, where most of the company were, she suddenly felt her knees giving way under her, and hurriedly sank down on an oak chair.
The two affairs which had convulsed him during his second year at Oxford were perhaps the most serious; the Laura Highford, his last episode, was fortunately over and had always been rather tiresome. In any case none of those ladies of the world or other world had any reasons to reproach him, and he was free and happy.
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