not her mother, since the blue blood of all the Kingsland's flows in
her veins."

"Never!" cried Zara, her eyes ablaze. "If I thought one drop of that
man's bitter blood throbbed in my heart, the first knife I met should
let it forth. Look at me!" she wildly cried, "look at me,
Pietro--Zara, your wife! Have I one look of him or his abhorred
English race?"

"My Zara, no! You are Sir Jasper Kingsland's daughter, but there is no
look of the great Sir Jasper in your gypsy face, nor in the face of our
darling, either. She is all our own!"

"I would strangle her in her cradle, dearly as I love her, else!" the
woman said, her passionate face aflame. "Pietro, my blood is like
liquid fire when I think of him and my mother's wrongs."

"Wait, Zara--wait. The wheel will turn and our time come. And now for
breakfast!"

She whipped off the pot, removed the lid, and a savory gush of steam
filled the room. The man Pietro laughed.

"Our poached hare smells appetizing. Keep the choicest morsel for the
mother, Zara, and tell her I will be with her presently. There!
Achmet the Astrologer lies in a heap."

He had deftly taken off his flowing cloak, his long, silvery beard and
hair, and flung them together in a corner, and now he stood in the
center of the room, a stalwart young fellow of thirty or thereabouts,