I hope you and Tristram will arrive in time to accompany me to dinner at Glastonbury House on Friday evening, when you can congratulate my beloved fiance, who holds you in affectionate regard.
"I am, my dear niece, always your devoted uncle, "FRANCIS MARKRUTE." When Tristram finished reading he exclaimed: "Good Lord!" For, quite absorbed in his own affairs, he had never even noticed the financier's peregrinations! Then as he looked at the letter again he said meditatively: "I expect they will be awfully happy--Ethelrida is such an unselfish, sensible, darling girl--" And it hurt Zara even in her present mood, for she felt the contrast to herself in his unconscious tone.
"My uncle never does anything without having calculated it will turn out perfectly," she said bitterly--"only sometimes it can happen that he plays with the wrong pawns." And Tristram wondered what she meant.

He and she had certainly been pawns in one of the Markrute games, and now he began to see this object, just as Zara had done.

Then the thought came to him .-- Why should he not now ask her straight out--why she had married him?
It was not from any desire for himself, nor his position, he knew that: but for what?
So, the moment the servants went out of the room to get the coffee--after a desultory conversation about the engagement until then, he said coldly: "You told me on Monday that you now know the reason I had married you: may I ask you why did you marry me ?" She clasped her hands convulsively.

This brought it all back--her poor little brother--and she was not free yet from her promise to her uncle: she never failed to keep her word.
A look of deep, tragic earnestness grew in her pools of ink, and she said to him, with a strange sob in her voice: "Believe me I had a strong reason, but I cannot tell it to you now." And the servants reentered the room at the moment, so he could not ask her why: it broke the current.
But what an unexpected inference she always put into affairs! What was the mystery?
He was thrilled with suspicious, terrible interest.

But of one thing he felt sure--Francis Markrute did not really know.
And in spite of his chain of reasoning about this probable lover some doubt about it haunted him always; her air was so pure--her mien so proud.
And while the servants were handing the coffee and still there Zara rose, and, making the excuse that she must write to her uncle at once, left the room to avoid further questioning.