“You have not been long in this country, Lady Tancred, have you?  One can see it—­you are so exquisitely chic.  And how perfectly you speak English!  Not the slightest accent.  It is delicious.  Did you learn it when very young?”

“My father was an Englishman,” said Zara, disarmed from her usual chilling reserve by the sympathy in his voice.  “I always spoke it until I was thirteen, and since then, too.  It is a nice, honest language, I think.”

“You speak numbers of others, probably?” Lord Elterton went on, admiringly.

“Yes, about four or five.  It is very easy when one is moving in the countries, and certain languages are very much alike.  Russian is the most difficult.”

“How clever you are!”

“No, I am not a bit.  But I have had time to read a good deal—­” and then Zara stopped.  It was so against her habit to give personal information to any one like this.

Lord Elterton saw the little check, and went on another tack.  “I have been an idle fellow and am not at all learned,” he said.  “Tristram and I were at Eton together in the same house, and we were both dunces; but he did rather well at Oxford, and I went straight into the Guards.”

Zara longed to ask about Tristram.  She had not even heard before that he had been to Oxford!  And it struck her suddenly how ridiculous the whole thing was.  She had sold herself for a bargain; she had asked no questions of any one; she had intended to despise the whole family and remain entirely aloof; and now she found every one of her intentions being gradually upset.  But as yet she did not admit for a second to herself that she was falling in love.  It would be such a perfectly impossible thing to do in any case, when now he was absolutely indifferent to her and showed it in every way.  It made the whole thing all the more revolting—­to have pretended he loved her on that first night!  Yes, with certain modifications of classes and races men were all perfectly untrustworthy, if not brutes, and a woman, if she could relax her vigilance, as regards the defense of her person and virtue, could not afford to unbend a fraction as to her emotions!

And all the time she was thinking this out she was silent, and Lord Elterton watched her, thrilled with the attraction of the unobtainable.  He saw plainly she had forgotten his very presence, and, though piqued, he grew the more eager.

“I would love to know what you were thinking of,” he said softly; and then with great care he pulled a bramble aside so that it should not touch her.  They had turned into a lane beyond the kitchen garden and the park.

Zara started.  She had, indeed, been far away!

“I was thinking—­” she said, and then she paused for a suitable lie but none came, so she grew confused, and stopped, and hesitated, and then she blurted out, “I was thinking was it possible there could ever be any one whom one could believe?”