CROSS PURPOSES.
“Though matches are all made in Heaven, they say,
Yet Hymen, who mischief oft hatches,
Sometimes deals with the house t’other side of the way,
And there they make lucifer matches.”
“I saw Conway riding with Crystal Meredyth this afternoon, looking
awfully spooney.” This is what Zai overhears Sir Everard Aylmer say in
his inane drawl to Gabrielle, in the carriage, on the way to Elm Lodge.
A lump of ice seems to settle down on her heart, and two small, very
cold, hands clasp one another under her white cloak; but she is a
daughter of Belgravia, and to a certain extent true to her colours; so
when she walks into Mrs. Meredyth’s not over-spacious, but unpleasantly
crowded room, her face shows no emotion, and the only effect of Everard
Aylmer’s words, is a lovely pink flush, that makes Carlton Conway’s
affianced wife tenfold more attractive.
And it is fortunate that, young as she is, her breeding has taught her
self-control; for the first thing her grey eyes fall on is her lover and
Crystal Meredyth floating round the room, and very much enjoying their
valse, to all appearances.
So Zai turns away from that which is dearest to her in the world, and
turns towards Lord Delaval, who, either by chance or on purpose, stands
at her side.
As Zai looks up in the peer’s face, she acknowledges, for the first
time, that he is certainly a handsome man. And, indeed, there cannot be
two opinions on this score. He is as handsome as the Apollo Belvedere--a
fact of which he is quite as well aware as his neighbours.
Tall and slim, his hair a fair golden, his eyes ultramarine to their
deepest depths, his features perfect, his mouth carved like a cameo, and
almost as hard. Yet, however vain he may be, there is nothing really
offensive in his vanity, nothing of that arrogant self-conceit, that
overpowering self-complacency, that makes puppyism a mild epithet to
apply to some men.
Lord Delaval is spoilt, of course--an _enfant gâté_ of the fair sex, and
prone to that general masculine failing of fancying himself perfectly
irresistible; but on the whole, women adore him, and men pronounce him
“not a bad sort.”
At the present moment he suffers from _embarras des richesses_; for he
knows that Gabrielle and Baby are both delightfully disposed towards him
and--wonder of wonders--Zai seems to have suddenly awakened to a proper
appreciation of him as well.
But he is quite equal to any emergency of this kind. In his heart he
admires Zai more than any of the Beranger family, and--he detests
Carlton Conway.
“Shall we have a turn?” he asks.
She assents at once as she meets the ultramarine smiling eyes. And they
too float round and round the room. They both waltz splendidly, and when
Carl pauses a moment to give his partner breathing time, his eye falls
at once on them, and in the same moment, someone remarks near him:
“What a handsome couple Delaval and Zai Beranger make.”
Before, however, he has time to recover his anger and jealousy, Zai and
her escort have disappeared out on the lawn.
Ever since she could toddle Zai has held her own. No one in the world is
better able to paddle her own canoe than this beautiful little daughter
of Belgravia, and from sheer feelings of pique, she is positively
satisfied with the companion on whose arm she wanders through the
flowery walks of Elm Lodge. There are plenty of other couples doing the
same thing, so there is nothing against the convenances. And Zai knows
that her mother is at this moment revelling in dreams of Lord Delaval
for a son-in-law.
“Let her revel if she likes,” Zai says to herself. “I shall marry Carl
all the same.”
And even while she soliloquises thus, she teems with coquetry; but it is
a coquettishness that is perfectly subordinate to good taste, and her
instincts are all those which come from gentle breeding.
There is in her none of the making of what we call a fast young lady.
When time has fully opened the flower, it will be of a higher order than
any of those gaudy blossoms. Only nineteen, she shows a grace and
subtlety, and a _savoir faire_ that astonishes Lord Delaval, and then,
though beauty is only skin deep, Zai is so very beautiful. After all,
this must be set down as her chief attraction.
There is a bewildering charm about her little face that words cannot
describe--a deliciousness about her soft colouring, and her great, grey
eyes are brimful of a liquid provoking light, as they look up at her
cavalier and tell him, in mute but powerful language, that he finds
favour in their sight, although it must be confessed it is for “this
night only.” Her cheeks are still flushed, and smiles play on her pretty
mouth, and, like all women, this bit of a girl is surely a born actress,
for the man of the world, wary as he deems himself, and skilled in all
the wiles of the sex, really believes that he has done her injustice in
crediting her with a _grande passion_ for “that actor fellow,” and is
satisfied that, like Julius Cæsar, he has conquered.
Presently the flowery paths are deserted as the sweet strains of
“Dreamland” fall on them. Zai shivers a little as she remembers that to
these she valsed last with Carl--Carl, who is so monopolised with
Crystal Meredyth that he has evidently forgotten the existence of any
other woman.
Pique and jealousy drive her to lingering on in these dim-lit grounds.
Pique and jealousy make her little hand cling closer to Lord Delaval’s
arm, and her manner and voice softer to him; but the convenances must be
considered. She is too much Belgravian to forget them. So she says:
“Had we not better think of going back to the ball-room?”
“Why should we?” Lord Delaval murmurs softly.
Enchanted with his companion, he has no inclination to return to the
beauties of whom he is sick and tired.
“I am sure the lawn is delicious; but if you wish to go in, of course,
let us go.”
“No, I do not exactly wish to go in,” she answers hesitatingly. Just
this particular night she does not desire to vex him. She wants, in
fact, to _afficher_ herself with him, only to show Carlton Conway that
other men appreciate her fully, if he doesn’t. “But we have been out for
some time. You see we are left sole monarchs of all we survey, and mamma
may entertain a faint sensation of wonder as to what has become of me.”
He smiles under cover of his blond moustache; he knows Lady Beranger is
perfectly aware with whom her daughter is “doing the illuminated lawns,”
and that, as he happens to be an eligible, she does not trouble further.
“Let her wonder,” he answers languidly. “It is very good for her, don’t
you know? Wondering developes the--the speculative faculties. Don’t go
in just yet. It is so seldom I get a chance of talking to you quietly.
There are always such a lot of bothering people about!”
“Do you mean Gabrielle or Baby?” she says with a laugh, though her heart
is aching dreadfully, and even as she talks, she can in her mind’s eye
see her Carl looking into Crystal Meredyth’s china blue eyes, as if
those eyes were the stars of his existence.
“I mean--_Conway_--tell me, do you really care for him as--as much as
you have made me think you do?”
A flutter of leaves in a neighbouring shrubbery makes her look round.
There, against the dense dark foliage, stands out in relief like a
billow of the sea, the pale green diaphanous garments which Crystal
Meredyth wears to-night, and close beside her a tall figure, that Zai
knows too well.
Her heart beats fast and a blinding mist seems to rise before her
vision, but she has not been tutored by Lady Beranger in vain.
“Have you yet to learn, Lord Delaval, that women do not exactly wear
their hearts on their sleeves for daws to peck at?” she says with a low
musical laugh, “or do you think Mr. Conway so irresistible that no one
can resist him?”
As she almost whispers this, her conscience is troubled with a
compunctious throb, her glance seeks the tiny, almost invisible, chain
to which the locket containing Carl’s picture is attached, and out of
the cloistered greenness and dimness Carl Conway’s handsome face seems
to look at her reproachfully for denying her love for him.
“_So_ glad to hear you speak like this!” Lord Delaval murmurs quite
tenderly, and he slightly presses against him the little hand lying so
snow-white on his arm, “especially as a little bird has told me
something.”
“What has it told you?” Zai asks carelessly, while her eyes follow the
two figures of her evidently inconstant lover and his companion, with a
pathos and wistfulness in their depths that the dusk luckily hides from
Lord Delaval.
“It told me that Conway is going to marry Miss Meredyth.”
For half an instant Zai forgets her Belgravian training. Under the
Chinese lanterns her cheeks grow white as death, and there is an
unmistakable tremor in her voice as she says:
“Are they engaged? But it is not possible!” she adds more slowly.
“Why isn’t it possible?” asks Lord Delaval, rousing out of languor into
a suspicious condition. “Is it because he has been trying to make you
believe that Miss Meredyth’s bank stock and horses and diamonds are of
no importance in his opinion?”
“Miss Meredyth’s money,” Zai says in a low voice. “I--I did not know she
was very rich!” Then she cries impetuously:
“How contemptible it is for a man to be mercenary.”
“Some men cannot help being so,” he replies quietly. “For instance, what
can fellows like Conway, who have no substantial means at all, do?”
“Do? Why--
‘To go and hang yourselves, for being yourselves.’”
quoths Zai flippantly, as she moves towards the house.
Suddenly she pauses, she _cannot_ go in just now into the crowded
ball-room and look with calmness on her faithless--faithless lover.
Ah! how unutterably wretched she is. She feels as if life were over for
her, now that Carl is going to marry Miss Meredyth.
“I have got such a headache,” she says wearily (she might say
heartache), “and if I go into that suffocating room, it will be worse.
Then to-morrow I shall make my appearance at breakfast with great
haggard eyes, red-rimmed and underlined with bistre shades, and a horrid
white face that will draw down _such_ a scolding from mamma and Trixy!
_You_ know well enough all I shall have to endure.”
The trivial bond of sympathy which her stress on the “you” seems to
indicate sounds strangely pleasant to his ears, but he preserves a
silence, though he gazes at her fixedly.
For, under the flickering light, Zai is truly a thing of beauty and a
joy for ever.
“Lord Delaval, _will_ you do me a very great favour?” she pleads
prettily, glancing up at him.
“Of course!” he answers rather dreamily. He is a Society man, a scoffer
at sentiment, an Atheist in love, but this little girl’s ways and
proximity exercise a curious influence over him. They are in fact
something like the opium trance, of which De Quincey gives so wonderful
a description in the “Suspiria.”
He is conscious of an intense longing that the favour she asks will be
to kiss her! He feels at this moment that he would willingly give up
everything in the world, his successes of the past, his hopes for the
future, his schemes in the present, just for the sake of touching this
soft scarlet mouth once,
“To waste his whole soul in one kiss
Upon these perfect lips,”
in fact, but there is an inexplicable sensation of reverence for her
that no other woman has ever raised in his breast.
And there is a purity in the face shewing up in the semi-light, that
fills him, _blasé_ as he is--satiated as he is, with a wonderment that
no woman’s face has ever created in him before.
“I want to go right round the garden.”
The request is so simple, so childish, that it brings him down at once
from the height to which imagination has raised him to practical
every-day existence, and he laughs aloud at his own sentimental folly.
“But what will they say to our escapade? The garden is a large one, and
it is close upon twelve o’clock now. You know how strict Lady Beranger’s
notions are regarding the _bienséances_, and that such a nocturnal
excursion will be in her eyes, flagrant. Unless indeed,” and he lowers
his voice to the most harmonious key, “you were with a man you were
engaged to!”
She does not seem to hear, or else she does not heed, the concluding
words of his sentence, a deafness and indifference on her part that
rails him considerably.
“If I were Gabrielle, I should answer, _au diable_ with anyone who
wants to coerce me, especially when what I wish to do is innocent
enough. As it is, those dreadful bogies of my life, _convenances_ and
_bienséances_, must be infringed, the flagrancy of a nocturnal escapade
braved, for I _will_ go round the garden, and you, Lord Delaval, you
will surely be kind enough to stay here quietly under these lovely
trees, until I come. Don’t let any one see you, for Heaven’s sake, that
is, not mamma, or she will be suspecting I am flown, goodness knows
where! I won’t tax your patience for more than ten minutes I promise.”
So after all she has not proposed a longer promenade for the sake of
_his_ society, he thinks angrily. It is simply girlish nonsense that she
wishes to indulge in, or--perhaps she wants to have a quiet cry over
Carl Conway’s engagement to Crystal Meredyth. This suspicion ices his
tone, and alters his manner strangely.
“I cannot possibly let you go by yourself, but if you _will_ go, I will
go with you!”
“No! No! Do let me go by myself. What I want so much is to be alone with
night, with the silence--with myself,” she answers hastily, then she
adds quietly:
“You see I have _such_ a headache, Lord Delaval.”
“I cannot let you go alone,” he replies, rather haughtily, dreadfully
irritated at her evident reluctance to his company, when he fain would
give ten years of his life to be able to catch the slight figure in his
arms, and to rain down as many caresses as are his bent on her sweet
face, and withal he yearns for the power of making her fold her lovely
butterfly wings, to settle down at his feet, possibly to be spurned
when sick of her.
“If I let you venture out of my sight at such an hour, what account
should I be able to render to Lady Beranger? So you see I must accompany
you.”
“Then I will go into the house at once,” she flashes.
“The most sensible thing for you to do,” he says, coldly, and his tone
vexes her immensely, for she does not of course know that he is only too
willing to stay here, in these quiet, deserted grounds, with myriads of
stars overhead, and the great elms casting down cool shadows on them,
while he can gaze his fill on what seems to him to-night the rarest
loveliness he has looked on in his thirty years.
But Zai, though she fumes inwardly, thinks discretion is the better part
of valour and says nothing. In truth, all she longs for is a few
moments’ quiet, during which she can nerve herself to pass Carl Conway
calmly, now that she has found out his duplicity.
And she would have staked her existence on his honour and fidelity!
Turning suddenly, she wanders down the first path and on and on,
communing with her own heart, fighting with the love which is greater
and stronger than herself, utterly forgetful that a tall, stately form
stalks by her side in dignified silence.
Then, when more than ten minutes have elapsed, Lord Delaval’s voice
rouses her into consciousness of her whereabouts and her supreme folly.
“Well!” he says, “do you think we have had enough of this garden? The
dew is falling fast, and I am unsentimental enough to be liable to
rheumatism.”
Zai stops short and faces him.
“I beg your pardon, Lord Delaval. I--I really forgot you were with me.
Let us go back at once, of course.”
She has braced up her courage to meet the grand ordeal--the ordeal which
she believes will lay her young life in ashes.
It is to look Carl Conway in the face, like Tennyson’s Lady Clara Vere
de Vere, to slay her unfaithful lover with a glance.
Thinking of this, she hurries on, oblivious again of Lord Delaval’s
proximity, until they reach the house.
Just as they are on the point of entering, a hand pushes back the lace
curtains of the long French casement that gives out on this portion of
the lawn, and lies diagonally, as it were, with the path leading up to
the entrance, and without any reason the two pause side by side a
moment. Two figures--a man and a woman, stand well relieved against the
background of brilliant light. The woman is very tall and slender, and
clad in amber flowing drapery, with a blood red pomegranate flower
burning vividly against her massive coronet of black hair. The man is
also tall, and wears a fair, boyish appearance.
The two voices float out distinctly enough on the stillness outside.
“It is growing very late, and Delaval and your sister, or Beatrice and
Benedick, as you call them, have not put in an appearance yet,” Sir
Everard Aylmer remarks presently, glancing at a tiny enamelled watch he
wears.
“Doubtless they have lagged on the lawn for a sociable quarrel. Beatrice
and Benedick had a weakness that way, you know,” and Gabrielle Beranger
laughs somewhat artificially. “According to the hackneyed old proverb,
‘the quarrels of lovers are the renewal of love.’”
“Delaval and your sister must be a most interesting pair of lovers,”
drawls the Baronet with a smile. “Can you tell me, Miss Beranger, why
quarrelling should be considered an incipient sign of love?”
“_Dieu_, how should I know? I never take the trouble to quarrel with
anyone, and certainly was never in love.”
Gabrielle speaks out sharply, and at this moment she believes completely
in her assertion, for the knowledge that Lord Delaval is wandering about
a dew-lit lawn, with Zai’s lovely face at his side, and a white hand
laid on his arm, makes her feel as if she positively hates him with all
the force with which she is capable of hating as well as loving. That
hydra-headed monster, yclept Jealousy, just tears her in twain, and it
is with the utmost difficulty she keeps up a calm appearance and a
desultory conversation with the man whom Lady Beranger has consigned to
her kind devices with a--
“Now don’t forget, Gabrielle, that Sir Everard Aylmer is the sixteenth
baronet, that he has a purse as long as his pedigree, and is an
impressionable fool--you’ll never have such a chance again.”
“You never take the trouble to quarrel with anyone, and you certainly
were never in love?” Sir Everard repeats after her, pretty nearly
verbatim, like a parrot. “My dear Miss Beranger, how very dreadful! or
rather, how very charming it would be for someone to try to vex you, so
that having gone through the first exertion, you may, perchance, fall
into the second state.”
“Ahem! Hardly probable, I think,” she answers carelessly, averting her
head, and peering out into the fragrant shadows. But like Sister Anne,
she sees no one, and all she hears is the leaf shaken by the wind; not a
sign of the absentees meets her sight, and all her pictured enjoyment at
Mrs. Meredyth’s “At Home” turns into the veriest Dead Sea fruit.
“Will you give me leave to try, Miss Beranger?” pleads a voice that,
though drawling in tone, sounds more genuine than the plupart of voices
in Tophet.
“To make me quarrel with you? Why, certainly! as the Yankees say; but I
warn you that you will not be able to renew the combat a second time.”
“Why?”
“Oh, because quarrelling is such a nuisance, and it is so seldom worth
making it up again, that I always eschew the acquaintance of the
belligerent party, you know,” she says flippantly.
At this moment she is not only indifferent to, but she detests the very
vision of the position and wealth Lady Beranger has put before her in
such glowing terms, and which the “impressionable fool” beside her has
it in his power to offer. Gabrielle’s heart--if what she has of heart is
worthy of the name--is being sorely lacerated by the absence of the only
face she loves to look upon, and she recollects fiercely that her
sister’s grey eyes can gaze their fill on it, while her own glaring
black ones are denied.
So she clenches her small fist and in her Bohemian fashion swears
inwardly at the cruelty of fate that divides her from Lord Delaval, and
barely hears the words of this evidently struck “sixteenth baronet.”
“But why should you make that a rule?” he persists.
He is not given to talking, but to-night he seems positively garrulous.
“Beatrice is a most delicious creature, why should you repudiate being
like her, Miss Beranger?”
“Because I have no fancy for a Benedick.”
“Would you like to be Katherine, then? Is there a Petruchio living at
whose bidding you could grow tame?”
Is there? she knows there is, and a bright flush suffuses her face while
she acknowledges to herself that at his bidding she would be the veriest
slave that ever trod the earth, and she answers all the more
impetuously, with her eyes flashing.
“No! no! no! a hundred times no,” and Sir Everard cannot doubt that she
answers truly.
She is so handsome, though, in her wild gipsy beauty, that he rouses out
of his insular quiet ways of thinking, and decides that it would be a
pity to tame her defiant spirit, or to hush the ringing tones of her
voice.
“Would a Romeo suit you?” he questions, in such soft womanish accents
that her scarlet lips curl as she listens.
“To smother me in sweets, do you mean? oh, no, Sir Everard! _Aucun
chemin des fleurs ne conduit à la gloire_, you know, and I have lived
such a work-a-day life, before I was brought into the sacred precincts
of Belgravia, that to me, love and glory and ambition are synonymous
words.”
“I have it!” he cries gleefully, like a schoolboy who has succeeded in
unravelling a problem of Euclid. “After running through this list of
celebrities, I have pitched on the right one to please you; now, ’pon
honour, isn’t it a Marc Antony you like best?”
“Perhaps he touches me nearer, only I am of such a horrible avaricious
nature, and my ambition is so insatiable, that I should prefer some one
who would gain a world for me, instead of losing one.”
“Almost a fool could do that,” he murmurs naïvely, and she, remembering
Lady Beranger’s opinion of him, bites her lips to control a laugh. “I am
sure I could aim at anything if you were not such a bright and
particular star, and I could hope to reach you,” he goes on
_pêle-mêle_, mixing up prose and poetry in a helplessly dismembered
fashion.
Gabrielle laughs out freely at this, a laugh that is a perfect
death-blow to sentiment although it is harmonious.
“Now, that’s a charmingly turned speech,” she replies, “I might almost
fancy you a Frenchman. I am sure you have nothing to improve on it in
your quiver, so on the principle of a _bonne bouche_ we’ll go in and
report to Lady Beranger that the others have not come in yet. I am
afraid she will be angry at such a defiance of the _bienséances_,” she
adds, but she thinks:
“Not that she will mind a bit, she will only think Lord Delaval is
having it all his own way with the aid of his handsome face and that
oily tongue of his.”
The two move off, and the lace curtains fall back into their place.
Then in a hard sort of voice, Zai turns to her companion:
“I hope you won’t be surprised at my speaking to you plainly, Lord
Delaval, and don’t be shocked if I ignore the convenances in my words.”
He is feeling rather irritated against her. The evening had begun as he
thought so sweetly, and now a latent suspicion is in his mind that Zai’s
willingness to be with him so much to-night has proceeded from some
_arrière pensée_ which he cannot quite divine.
“Continue, and do not mind about shocking me I beg of you; I am capable
of standing a good deal, you know,” and he gives a curt laugh.
“You heard, of course, all that Gabrielle and Sir Everard Aylmer said
about us?”
He bows his head.
“Of course, Lord Delaval, you don’t require me to tell you how
ridiculous all they said was, and since they were so ridiculous and
never would be anything else, imagine how distasteful they are to me.”
“Which part of their conversation was distasteful?”
Zai blushes under the starlit sky.
“You _must_ know which part,” she answers half shyly.
“That part about you and I being _lovers_?”
“Eh, _bien_!”
“Well, we are not, you know.”
“Admitted, but that is no reason we should not be.”
“Lord Delaval!” she flashes, “what can you be thinking of? You know
quite well that you are nothing to me--nothing--and of course I am
nothing to you!”
“Zai--don’t start, I must call you Zai, for I think of you as
such--there is no distance between us two in my thoughts. I can prove to
you, too, that you are mistaken in what you say; the man who has learnt
to love you with a love that is infinite, a passion that is
uncontrollable, and the dearest desire of whose heart is to pass his
life in proving that love, cannot possibly be _nothing_ to you! while,
believe it or not, you are simply _everything_ to him!”
“Lord Delaval!”
Carl had asked her whether she would ever allow other men to dare to
make love to her, and she had answered that she would sooner die! and
here she stands, alone with the starlit sky, the silence and the shadowy
trees, herself and a man who not only dares to make love to her but
absolutely does it in a possessive positive fashion that takes her
breath away in sheer indignation and amazement.
Zai is very young, and, though a daughter of Belgravia, so strangely
ignorant of the tricks and wiles of her own and the opposite sex, that
for a moment she gasps, and then loses the sense of dignity in anger.
“How _dare_ you say such words to me?” she asks, unconsciously using
Carlton Conway’s word “dare.” “You know they are false--false as--as
_you_ are! You know that if you have any love it should be given to
Gabrielle or Baby. You ought to be ashamed to say such things to me,
when you know how you have made Gabrielle love you!”
“Gabrielle!” he repeats, with a complacent smile. Why! Zai is jealous
after all! “Is it possible that you think of her and of me in the same
breath? You might accredit me with better taste, I think. Come, Zai!
will you let me try and convince you of the sincerity of my love for
_you_?” he says softly.
“No! No!” she cries hastily, thinking it is base treason to Carl, even
to listen to all this. “No! it would be useless, a waste of time on your
part, since I tell you frankly that _I_ could never love _you_.”
“A good many women say that, and yet learn the lesson of love at last,
learn it too well, to their cost,” he remarks with supreme conceit.
“It may be so, very likely it is, in fact,” she replies as she scans
his face, and, in spite of Carl, is fain forced to confess to herself
that to women who love physical attraction, this man with his fair
languid beauty, his earnest ultramarine eyes, must be irresistible. “But
I could never be one of them.”
“Do give me leave to try,” he whispers in a voice that is wonderfully
seductive. “You shall be as free as a bird, only I--I shall be
bound--and willingly.”
“No! No!” she says, almost sharply.
It is not that she fears temptation, but the very idea of love from
anyone but Carl is odious to her.
“I could never care for you. I could never marry you.”
“Reconsider that, Zai!”
“If I reconsidered it for ever I should never change my mind!”
Lord Delaval shrugs his shoulders slightly, and fixes his eyes steadily,
almost rudely, on her.
“I am not, as a rule, a betting man, or I should be willing to lay very
heavy odds that you will live to regret those words, or to unsay them.”
Why is it that at this moment an ice cold hand seems to grasp the girl’s
heart and hold it in a vice? She is really as free as air, no human
being has power of compulsion over her, least of all this man who dares
to threaten her. Yet she shivers a little in the soft, warm, June air,
and without answering a word walks hastily into the house.
Lady Beranger and Gabrielle stand near the entrance of the ball-room,
and beyond them Zai sees Carlton Conway, and on his arm, just emerging
from the supper-room, Crystal Meredyth.
A faintness creeps over her and her hands grow chill as death, while her
face blanches to the hue of a white rose.
It seems too hard, too hard! that he should flaunt his flagrant
flirtation with this girl before her very eyes; but she is equal to the
occasion. With her dainty head erect, her slender figure pulled up to
its utmost height, she passes her mother and sister, Lord Delaval still
at her side, and, as she nears her lover and her rival, she looks up,
smiles in Lord Delaval’s face, and lays her hand on his arm.
“First some supper, and then ten waltzes at least,” she says in a bright
ringing tone, “and _après cela, le deluge_.”
A little haughty bend to Carl--Carl, whom she is loving at this moment
with every fibre of her being, and she is gone, while Lord Delaval
shrugs his shoulders once more and presses the little, white-gloved hand
to his side, and says to himself with a feeling of complacency:
“_Femme souvent varie--folle qui s’y fie!_”
[Illustration]