After all, nothing could have been better than Zara's being late.

Circumstance often played into the hand of an experienced manipulator like himself.

Now if she only kept up this attitude of indifference, which, indeed, she seemed likely to do--she was no actress, he knew--things might be settled this very night.
Lord Tancred could not get her to have a single continued conversation for the remainder of dinner; he was perfectly raging with annoyance, his fighting blood was up.

And when at the first possible moment after the dessert arrived she swept from the room, her eyes met his as he held the door and they were again full of contemptuous hate.
He returned to his seat with his heart actually thumping in his side.
And all through the laborious conversation upon Canada and how best to invest capital, which Francis Markrute with great skill and apparently hearty friendship prolonged to its utmost limits, he felt the attraction and irritation of the woman grow and grow.

He no longer took the slightest interest in the pros and cons of his future in the Colony, and when, at last, he heard the distant tones of Tschaikovsky's _Chanson Triste_ as they ascended the stairs he came suddenly to a determination.
She was sitting at the grand piano in the back part of the room.