Every one was so sleepy and tired on Sunday morning, after their night at Arthur’s Court, that only Lady Ethelrida and Laura Highford, who had a pose of extreme piety always ready at hand, started with the Duke and Young Billy for church.  Francis Markrute watched them go from his window, which looked upon the entrance, and he thought how stately and noble his fair lady looked; and he admired her disciplined attitude, no carousal being allowed to interfere with her duties.  She was a rare and perfect specimen of her class.

His lady fair!  For he had determined, if fate plainly gave him the indication, to risk asking her to-day to be his fair lady indeed.  A man must know when to strike, if the iron is hot.

He had carefully prepared all the avenues; and had made himself of great importance to the Duke, allowing his masterly brain to be seen in glimpses, and convincing His Grace of his possible great usefulness to the party to which he belonged.  He did not look for continued opposition in that quarter, once he should have assured himself that Lady Ethelrida loved him.  That he loved her, with all the force of his self-contained nature, was beyond any doubt.  Love, as a rule, recks little of the suitability of the object, when it attacks a heart; but in some few cases ­that is the peculiar charm ­Francis Markrute had waited until he was forty-six years old, firmly keeping to his ideal, until he found her, in a measure of perfection, of which even he had not dared to dream.  His theory, which he had proved in his whole life, was that nothing is beyond the grasp of a man who is master of himself and his emotions.  But even his iron nerves felt the tension of excitement, as luncheon drew to an end, and he knew in half an hour, when most of the company were safely disposed of, he should again find his way to his lady’s shrine.

Ethelrida did not look at him.  She was her usual, charmingly-gracious self to her neighbors, solicitous of Tristram’s headache.  He had only just appeared, and looked what he felt ­a wreck.  She was interested in some news in the Sunday papers, which had arrived; and in short, not a soul guessed how her gentle being was uplifted, and her tender heart beating with this, the first real emotion she had ever experienced.

Even the Crow, so thrilled with his interest in the bridal pair, had not scented anything unusual in his hostess’s attitude towards one of her guests.

“I think Mr. Markrute is awfully attractive, don’t you, Crow?” said Lady Anningford, as they started for their walk.  To go to Lynton Heights after lunch on Sunday was almost an invariable custom at Montfitchet.  “I can’t say what it is, but it is something subtle and extraordinary, like that in his niece ­what do you think?”

Colonel Lowerby paused, struck from her words by the fact that he had been too preoccupied to have noticed this really interesting man.

“Why, ’pon my soul ­I haven’t thought!” he said, “but now you speak of it, I do think he is a remarkable chap.”

“He is so very quiet,” Lady Anningford went on, “and, whenever he speaks, it is something worth listening to; and if you get on any subject of books, he is a perfect encyclopaedia.  He gives me the impression of all the forces of power and will, concentrated in a man.  I wonder who he really is?  Not that it matters a bit in these days.  Do you think there is any Jew in him?  It does not show in his type, but when foreigners are very rich there generally is.”

“Sure to be, as he is so intelligent,” the Crow growled.  “If you notice, numbers of the English families who show brains have a touch of it in the background.  So long as the touch is far enough away, I have no objection to it myself ­prefer folks not to be fools.”

“I believe I have no prejudices at all,” said Lady Anningford.  “If I like people, I don’t care what is in their blood.”

“It is all right till you scratch ’em.  Then it comes out; but if, as I say, it is far enough back, the Jew will do the future Tancred race a power of good, to get the commercial common sense of it into them ­knew Maurice Grey, her father, years ago, and he was just as indifferent to money and material things, as Tristram is himself.  So the good will come from the Markrute side, we will hope.”

“I rather wonder, Crow ­if there ever will be any more of the Tancred race.  I thought last night we had a great failure, and that nothing will make that affair prosper.  I don’t believe they ever see one another from one day to the next!  It is extremely sad.”

“I told you they had come to a ticklish point in their careers,” the Crow permitted himself to remind his friend, “and, ’pon my soul, I could not bet you one way or another how it will go.  ‘I hae me doots,’ as the Scotchman said.”

Meanwhile, Ethelrida, on the plea of letters to write, had retired to her room; and there, as the clock struck a quarter past three, she awaited ­what?  She would not own to herself that it was her fate.  She threw dust in her own eyes, and called it a pleasant talk!

She looked absurdly young for her twenty-six years, just a dainty slip of a patrician girl, as she sat there on her chintz sofa, with its fresh pattern of lilacs and tender green.  Everything was in harmony, even to her soft violet cloth dress trimmed with fur.

And again as the hour for the trysting chimed, her lover that was to be, entered the room.

“This is perfectly divine,” he said, as he came in, while the roguish twinkle of a schoolboy, who has outwitted his mates sparkled in his fine eyes.  “All those good people tramping for miles in the cold and damp, while we two sensible ones are going to enjoy a nice fire and a friendly chat.”

Thus he disarmed her nervousness, and gave her time.

“May I sit by you, my Lady Ethelrida?” he said; and as she smiled, he took his seat, but not too near her ­nothing must be the least hurried or out of place.

So for about a quarter of an hour they talked of books ­their favorites ­hers, all so simple and chaste, his, of all kinds, so long as they showed style, and were masterpieces of taste and balance.  Then, as a great piece of wood fell in the open grate and made a volley of sparks, he leaned forward a little and asked her if he might tell her that for which he had come, the history of a man.

The daylight was drawing in, and they had an hour before them.

“Yes,” said Ethelrida, “only let us make up the fire first, and only turn on that one soft light,” and she pointed to a big gray china owl who carried a simple shade of white painted with lilacs on his back.  “Then we need not move again, because I want extremely to hear it ­the history of a man.”

He obeyed her commands, and also drew the silk blinds.

“Now, indeed, we are happy; at least, I am,” he said.

Lady Ethelrida leant back on her muslin embroidered cushion and prepared herself to listen with a rapt face.

Francis Markrute stood by the fire for a while, and began from there: 

“You must go right back with me to early days, Sweet Lady,” he said, “to a palace in a gloomy city and to an artiste ­a ballet-dancer ­but at the same time a great musicienne and a good and beautiful woman, a woman with red, splendid hair, like my niece.  There she lived in a palace in this city, away from the world with her two children; an Emperor was her lover and her children’s father; and they all four were happy as the day was long.  The children were a boy and a girl, and presently they began to grow up, and the boy began to think about life and to reason things out with himself.  He had, perhaps, inherited this faculty from his grandfather, on his mother’s side, who was a celebrated poet and philosopher and a Spanish Jew.  So his mother, the beautiful dancer, was half Jewess, and, from her mother again, half Spanish noble; for this philosopher had eloped with the daughter of a Spanish grandee, and she was erased from the roll.  I go back this far not to weary you, but that you may understand what forces in race had to do with the boy’s character.  The daughter again of this pair became an artist and a dancer, and being a highly educated, as well as a superbly beautiful woman ­a woman with all Zara’s charm and infinitely more chiseled features ­she won the devoted love of the Emperor of the country in which they lived.  I will not go into the moral aspect of the affair.  A great love recks not of moral aspects.  Sufficient to say, they were ideally happy while the beautiful dancer lived.  She died when the boy was about fifteen, to his great and abiding grief.  His sister, who was a year or two younger than he, was then all he had to love, because political and social reasons in that country made it very difficult, about this time, for him often to see his father, the Emperor.

“The boy was very carefully educated, and began early, as I have told you, to think for himself and to dream.  He dreamed of things which might have been, had he been the heir and son of the Empress, instead of the child of her who seemed to him so much the greater lady and queen, his own mother, the dancer; and he came to see that dreams that are based upon regrets are useless and only a factor in the degradation, not the uplifting of a man.  The boy grew to understand that from that sweet mother, even though the world called her an immoral woman, he had inherited something much more valuable to himself than the Imperial crown ­the faculty of perception and balance, physical and moral, to which the family of the Emperor, his father, could lay no claim.  From them, both he and his sister had inherited a stubborn, indomitable pride.  You can see it, and have already remarked it, in Zara ­that sister’s child.

“So when the boy grew to be about twenty, he determined to carve out a career for himself, to create a great fortune, and so make his own little kingdom, which should not be bound by any country or race.  He had an English tutor ­he had always had one ­and in his studies of countries and peoples and their attributes, the English seemed to him to be much the finest race.  They were saner, more understanding, more full of the sense of the fitness of things, and of the knowledge of life and how to live it wisely.

“So the boy, with no country, and no ingrained patriotism for the place of his birth, determined he, being free and of no nation, should, when he had made this fortune, migrate there, and endeavor to obtain a place among those proud people, whom he so admired in his heart.  That was his goal, in all his years of hard work, during which time he grew to understand the value of individual character, regardless of nation or of creed; and so, when finally he did come to this country, it was not to seek, but to command.”  And here Francis Markrute, master of vast wealth and the destinies of almost as many human souls as his father, the Emperor, had been, raised his head.  And Lady Ethelrida, daughter of a hundred noble lords, knew her father, the Duke, was no prouder than he, the Spanish dancer’s son.  And something in her fine spirit went out to him; and she, there in the firelight with the soft owl lamp silvering her hair, stretched out her hand to him; and he held it and kissed it tenderly, as he took his seat by her side.

“My sweet and holy one,” he said.  “And so you understand!”

“Yes, yes!” said Ethelrida.  “Oh, please go on” ­and she leaned back against her pillow, but she did not seek to draw away her hand.

“There came a great grief, then, in the life of the boy who was now a grown man.  His sister brought disgrace upon herself, and died under extremely distressful circumstances, into which I need not enter here; and for a while these things darkened and embittered his life.”  He paused a moment, and gazed into the fire, a look of deep sorrow and regret on his sharply-cut face, and Ethelrida unconsciously allowed her slim fingers to tighten in his grasp.  And when he felt this gentle sympathy, he stroked her hand.

“The man was very hard then, sweet lady,” he went on.  “He regrets it now, deeply.  The pure angel, who at this day rules his life, with her soft eyes of divine mercy and gentleness, has taught him many lessons; and it will be his everlasting regret that he was hard then.  But it was a great deep wound to his pride, that quality which he had inherited from his father, and had not then completely checked and got in hand.  Pride should be a factor for noble actions and a great spirit, but not for overbearance toward the failings of others.  He knows that now.  If this lady, whom he worships, should ever wish to learn the whole details of this time, he will tell her even at any cost to his pride, but for the moment let me get on to pleasanter things.”

And Ethelrida whispered, “Yes, yes,” so he continued: 

“All his life from a boy’s to a man’s, this person we are speaking of had kept his ideal of the woman he should love.  She must be fine and shapely, and noble and free; she must be tender and devoted, and gracious and good.  But he passed all his early manhood and grew to middle age, before he even saw her shadow across his path.  He looked up one night, eighteen months ago, at a court ball, and she passed him on the arm of a royal duke, and unconsciously brushed his coat with her soft dove’s wing; and he knew that it was she, after all those years, so he waited and planned, and met her once or twice; but fate did not let him advance very far, and so a scheme entered his head.  His niece, the daughter of his dead sister, had also had a very unhappy life; and he thought she, too, should come among these English people, and find happiness with their level ways.  She was beautiful and proud and good, so he planned the marriage between his niece and the cousin of the lady he worshiped, knowing by that he should be drawn nearer his star, and also pay the debt to his dead sister, by securing the happiness of her child; but primarily it was his desire to be nearer his own worshiped star, and thus it has all come about.”  He paused, and looked full at her face, and saw that her sweet eyes were moist with some tender, happy tears.  So he leaned forward, took her other hand, and kissed them both, placing the soft palms against his mouth for a second; then he whispered hoarsely, his voice at last trembling with the passionate emotion he felt: 

“Ethelrida ­darling ­I love you with my soul ­tell me, my sweet lady, will you be my wife?”

And the Lady Ethelrida did not answer, but allowed herself to be drawn into his arms.

And so in the firelight, with the watchful gray owl, the two rested blissfully content.