And then the two men grew deep in a political discussion, so as soon as Zara had eaten her peach she said she would leave them to their talk, and say "Good night," as she was tired out. "Yes, my niece," said her uncle who had risen. And he did what he had not done since she was a child, he stooped and kissed her white forehead. "Yes, indeed, you must go and rest. We both want you to do us justice to-morrow, don't we, Tristram? We must have our special lady looking her best." And she smiled a faint smile as she passed from the room. "By George! my dear boy," the financier went on, "I don't believe I ever realized what a gorgeously beautiful creature my niece is. She is like some wonderful exotic blossom--a mass of snow and flame!" And Tristram said with unconscious cynicism, "Certainly snow--but where is the flame?" Francis Markrute looked at him out of the corners of his clever eyes. She had been icy to him in Paris, then! But his was not the temperament to interfere. It was only a question of time. After all, a week was not long to grow accustomed to a perfect stranger. Then they went back to the library, and smoked for an hour or so and continued their political chat; and at last Markrute said to his new nephew-in-law blandly, "In a year or so, when you and Zara have a son, I will give you, my dear boy, some papers to read which will interest you as showing the mother's side of his lineage. It will be a fit balance, as far as actual blood goes, to your own." In a year or so, when Zara should have a son! Of all the aspects of the case, which her pride and disdain had robbed him of, this, Tristram felt, was perhaps--though it had not before presented itself to him--the most cruel. He would have no son! He got up suddenly and threw his unfinished cigar into the grate--that old habit of his when he was moved--and he said in a voice that the financier knew was strained, "That is awfully good of you. I shall have to have it inserted in the family tree--some day. But now I think I shall turn in. I want to have my eye rested, and be as fit as a fiddle for the shoot. I have had a tiring week." And Francis Markrute came out with him into the passage and up to the first floor, and when they got so far they heard the notes of the _Chanson Triste_ being played again from Zara's sitting-room. She had not gone to bed, then, it seemed! "Good God!" said Tristram. "I don't know why, but I wish to heaven she would not play that tune." And the two men looked at one another with some uneasy wonder in their eyes. "Go on and take her to bed," the financier suggested. "Perhaps she does not like being left so long alone." Tristram went upstairs with a bitter laugh to himself. He did not go near the sitting-room; he went straight into the room which had been allotted to himself: and a savage sense of humiliation and impotent rage convulsed him.