he had seen how beautiful and attractive you were, so I continued to
make my plans. You know my methods, my dear niece."

Zara's blazing and yet pitiful eyes were all his answer.

"Well, I calculated rightly. He came to dinner that night, and fell
madly in love with you, and at once asked to marry you himself, while he
insisted upon your fortune being tied up entirely upon you, and any
children that you might have, only allowing me to pay off the mortgages
on Wrayth for himself. It would be impossible for a man to have behaved
more like a gentleman. I thought now, in case you had not grasped all
this, you had better know." And then he said anxiously, "Zara--my dear
child--what is the matter?" for her proud head had fallen forward on her
breast, with a sudden deadly faintness. This, indeed, was the filling of
her cup.

His voice pulled her together, and she sat up; and to the end of his
life, Francis Markrute will never like to remember the look in her eyes.

"And you let me go on and marry him, playing this cheat? You let me go
on and spoil both our lives! What had I ever done to you, my uncle, that
you should be so cruel to me? Or is it to be revenged upon my mother for
the hurt she brought to your pride?"

If she had reproached him, stormed at him, anything, he could have borne
it better; but the utter lifeless calm of her voice, the hopeless look
in her beautiful white face, touched his heart--that heart but newly
unwrapped and humanized from its mummifying encasements by the
omnipotent God of Love. Had he, after all, been too coldly calculating
about this human creature of his own flesh and blood? Was there some