Tristram's face was still stony and he had sat down in a sofa by Laura, when a footman brought a telegram to Zara. He watched her open it, with concentrated interest. Whom were these mysterious telegrams from? He saw her face change as it had done in Paris, only not so seriously; and then she crushed up the paper into a ball and threw it in the fire. The telegram had been: "Very slightly feverish again," and signed "Mimo." "Now I remember where I have seen your wife before," said Laura. And Tristram said absently, "Where?" "In the waiting-room at Waterloo station--and yet--no, it could not have been she, because she was quite ordinarily dressed, and she was talking very interestedly to a foreign man." She watched Tristram's face and saw she had hit home for some reason; so she went on, enchanted: "Of course it could not have been she, naturally; but the type is so peculiar that any other like it would remind one, would it not?" "I expect so," he said. "It could not have been Zara, though, because she was in Paris until just before the wedding." "I remember the occasion quite well. It was the day after the engagement was announced, because I had been up for Flora's wedding, and was going down into the country." Then in a flash it came to him that that was the very day he himself had seen Zara in Whitehall, the day when she had not gone to Paris. And rankling, uncomfortable suspicions overcame him again. Laura felt delighted. She did not know why he should be moved at her announcement; but he certainly was, so it was worth while rubbing it in. "Has she a sister, perhaps? Because--now I come to think of it--the resemblance is extraordinary. I remember I was rather interested at the time because the man was so awfully handsome and as you know, dear boy, I always had a passion for handsome men!" "My wife was an only child," Tristram answered. What was Laura driving at? "Well, she has a double then," she laughed. "I watched them for quite ten minutes, so I am sure. I was waiting for my maid, who was to meet me, and I could not leave for fear of missing her." "How interesting!" said Tristram coldly. He would not permit himself to demand a description of the man. "Perhaps after all it was she, before she went to Paris, and I may be mistaken about the date," Laura went on. "It might have been her brother--he was certainly foreign--but no, it could not have been a brother." And she looked down and smiled knowingly. Tristram felt gradually wild with the stings her words were planting, and then his anger rebounded upon herself. Little natures always miscalculate the effect of their actions, as factors in their desires, for their ultimate ends. Laura only longed--after hurting Tristram as a punishment--to get him back again; but she was not clever enough to know that to make him mad with jealousy about his wife was not the way.