And Zara stared out of the window, her heart beating in her throat.  For she knew this was only a delay because, as her uncle had once said, the English nobility as a race were great gentlemen—­and this one in particular—­and because of that he would not be likely to make a scene in the train; but they would arrive at the hotel presently, and there was dinner to be got through, alone with him, and then—­the afterwards.  And as she thought of this her very lips grew white.

The hideous, hideous hatefulness of men!  Visions of moments of her first wedding journey with Ladislaus came back to her.  He had not shown her any consideration for five minutes in his life.

Everything in her nature was up in arms.  She could not be just; with her belief in his baseness it seemed to her that here was this man—­her husband—­whom she had seen but four times in her life, and he was not content with the honest bargain which he perfectly understood; not content with her fortune and her willingness to adorn his house, but he must perforce allow his revolting senses to be aroused, he must desire to caress her, just because she was a woman—­and fair—­and the law would give him the right because she was his wife.

But she would not submit to it!  She would find some way out.

As yet she had not even noticed Tristram’s charm, that something which drew all other women to him but had not yet appealed to her.  She saw on the rare occasions in which she had looked at him that he was very handsome—­but so had been Ladislaus, and so was Mimo; and all men were selfish or brutes.

She was half English herself, of course, and that part of her—­the calm, common sense of the nation, would assert itself presently; but for the time, everything was too strained through her resentment at fate.

And Tristram watched her from behind his Evening Standard, and was unpleasantly thrilled with the passionate hate and resentment and all the varying; storms of feeling which convulsed her beautiful face.

He was extremely sensitive, in spite of his daring insouciance and his pride.  It would be perfectly impossible to even address her again while she was in this state.

And so this splendid young bride and bridegroom, not understanding each other in the least, sat silent and constrained, when they should have been in each other’s arms; and presently, still in the same moods, they came to Dover, and so to the Lord Warden Hotel.

Here the valet and maid had already arrived, and the sitting-room was full of flowers, and everything was ready for dinner and the night.

“I suppose we dine at eight?” said Zara haughtily, and, hardly waiting for an answer, she went into the room beyond and shut the door.

Here she rang for her maid and asked her to remove her hat.

“A hateful, heavy thing,” she said, “and there is a whole hour fortunately, before dinner, Henriette, and I want a lovely bath; and then you can brush my hair, and it will be a rest.”