Nothing was ready for his lordship--but his wife would come up--?
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.