"They let us have a day off to-morrow; they think, quite naturally, we
require a rest. So if you will be ready about eleven I will show you the
gardens and the parts my mother loved--it all looks pretty dreary this
time of the year, but it can't be helped."

"I will be ready," Zara said.

"Then there is the Address from the townspeople at Wrayth, on Thursday,"
he continued, while he walked toward the door to open it for her, "and
on Friday we go up to London to say good-bye to my mother. I hope you
have not found it all too impossibly difficult, but it will soon be over
now."

"The whole of life is difficult," she answered, "and one never knows
what it is for, or why?" And then without anything further she went out
of the door, and so upstairs and through all the lonely corridors to the
boudoir. And here she opened the piano for the first time, and tried it;
and finding it good she sat a long time playing her favorite airs--but
not the _Chanson Triste_--she felt she could not bear that.

The music talked to her: what was her life going to be? What if, in the
end, she could not control her love? What if it should break down her
pride, and let him see that she regretted her past action and only
longed to be in his arms. For her admiration and respect for him were
growing each hour, as she discovered new traits in him, individually,
and began to understand what he meant to all these people whose lord he
was. How little she had known of England, her own father's country! How
ridiculously little she had really known of men, counting them all
brutes like Ladislaus and his friends, or feckless fools like poor
Mimo! What an impossible attitude was this one she had worn always of