But his lordship required nothing, he wished to find something alone.
He did not even notice that there was no fire in the grate, and that the room was icy cold—the agony of pain in his mind and soul made him unconscious of lesser ills. He pulled one of the holland sheets off his own big chair, and sat down in it.
Poor Zara, poor, unhappy Zara!—were his first thoughts—then he stiffened suddenly. This man must have been her lover before even her first marriage!—for Francis Markrute had told him she had married very soon. She was twenty-three years old now, and the child could not have been less than six; he must have been born when she was only seventeen. What devilish passion in a man could have made him tempt a girl so young! Of course this was her secret, and Francis Markrute knew nothing of it. For one frightful moment the thought came that her husband was not really dead and that this was he: but no, her husband's name had been Ladislaus, and this man she had called "Mimo," and if the boy were the child of her marriage there need then have been no secret about his existence. There was no other solution—this Count Sykypri had been her lover when she was a mere child, and probably the concealment had gone through all her first married life. And no doubt her reason for marrying him, which she admitted was a very strong one, had been that she might have money to give to the child—and its father.
The sickening—sickening, squalid tragedy of it all!
And she, Zara, had seemed so proud and so pure! Her look of scorn, only the night before, at his jealous accusation, came back to him. He could not remember a single movement nor action of hers that had not been that of an untarnished queen. What horrible actresses women were! His whole belief had crumbled to the dust.
And the most terrible part of it all to him was the knowledge that in spite of everything he still loved her—loved her with a consuming, almighty passion that he knew nothing now could kill. It had been put to the bitterest proof. Whatever she had done he could love no other woman.
Then he realized that his life was over. The future a blank, unutterable, hopeless gray which must go on for years and years. For he could never come back to her again, nor even live in the house with her, under the semblance of things.
Then an agonizing bitterness came to him, the hideous malevolence of fate, not to have let him meet this woman first before this other man; think of the faithfulness of her nature, with all its cruel actions to himself! She had been absolutely faithful to her lover, and had defended herself from his—Tristram's—caresses, even of her finger-tips. What a love worth having, what a strong, true character—worth dying for—in a woman!
And now, he must never see her again; or, if once more, only for a business meeting, to settle things without scandal to either of them.
He would not go back to Park Lane, yet—not for a week; he would give her time to see to the funeral, without the extra pain of his presence.