"Well, don't you think I have found you a perfect specimen, Uncle!" Tristram exclaimed; and he raised his glass and kissed the brim, while he whispered:
"Darling, my sweet lady—I drink to your health."
But this was too much for Zara—he was overdoing the part—and she turned and flashed upon him a glance of resentment and contempt.
Beyond the Duke sat Jimmy Danvers, and then Emily Guiscard and Lord Coltshurst, and the two young people exchanged confidences in a low voice.
"I say, Emily, isn't she a corker?" Sir James said. "She don't look a bit English, though, she reminds me of a—oh, well, I'm not good at history or dates, but some one in the old Florentine time. She looks as if she could put a dagger into one or give a fellow a cup of poison, without turning a hair."
"Oh, Jimmy! how horrid," exclaimed Emily. "She does not seem to me to have a cruel face, she only looks peculiar and mysterious, and—and—unsmiling. Do you think she loves Tristram? Perhaps that is the foreign way—to appear so cold."
At that moment Sir James Danvers caught the glance which Zara gave her fiancé for his toast.
"Je-hoshaphat!" he exclaimed! But he realized that Emily had not seen, so he stopped abruptly.
"Yes—one can never be sure of things with foreigners," he said, and he looked down at his plate. That poor devil of a Tristram was going to have a thorny time in the future, he thought, and he was to be best man at the wedding; it would be like giving the old chap over to a tigress! But, by Jove!—such a beautiful one would be worth being eaten by—he added to himself.
And during one of Francis Markrute's turnings to his left-hand neighbor Lord Coltshurst said to Lady Ethelrida: