A straw pallet with a wretched coverlet lay in one corner; a few broken stools were scattered around; a few articles of clothing hung on the wall.

That was all.
"The little one sleeps," the man said, casting a swift glance over at the pallet.

"Our pretty baby, Zara.

Ah, if Sir Jasper Kingsland loves his first-born son as we love our child, or half so well, we are almost avenged already!" "He had need to love it better than his first-born daughter!" Zara said, fiercely.

"The lion loves its whelp, the tiger its cub; but he, less human than the brutes, casts off his offspring in the hour of its birth!" "Meaning yourself, my Zara ?" the man said, with his slow, soft smile.
"What would you have, degraded daughter of a degraded mother--his toy of an hour?
And there is another daughter--a fair-haired, insipid nonentity of a dozen years, no more like our beautiful one here than a farthing rush-light is like the stars of heaven." He drew down the tattered quilt, and gazed with shining eyes of love and admiration at the sleeping face of a child, a baby girl of scarce two years, the cherub face rosy with sleep, smiling in her dreams; the long, silky black lashes sweeping the flushed cheek; the abundant, feathery, jet-black curls floating loosely about--an exquisite picture of blooming, healthful, beautiful childhood.
Zara came to where the man knelt.
"My beautiful one! my rosebud!" she murmured.