A mite of a breeze swishes by, just to stir up the leaves overhead out of their laziness, and to make them grumble monotonously at being disturbed. The big brown bees greedily devour the faces of the fragrant roses, the morning is dressed up in pale crimson, the scent of flowers weighs down the babyish wings of the air, and a couple of pinkish, purplish clouds stand like motionless pillars of Heaven.
It feels to the most unromantic like a hasty snatch of golden splendour gone astray from Eden, an hour in which “Society” forgets its paltry ambitions and heart-burnings, and feels as if there is yet some balm in Gilead, and a life beyond Tophet, in which human hearts will have peace and rest.
Zai has slipped out through the long French casement that opens on the lawn. Gabrielle has contrived to get Lord Delaval into the music-room, where she feeds him with passionate French love-songs, in a low, rich contralto. Trixy, leaning back, fair and indolent, and a trifle indifferent, listens to Archibald Hamilton’s prosy discourse on the Land Bill. Baby has meandered down the flowery paths with young Hargreaves, the good-looking village Vet, on pretence of showing him an ill-conditioned Persian cat, but in reality to amuse herself with him faute de mieux.
So Zai, once out of sight, flies swiftly through the shrubberies, and only pauses when the far end of the grounds is reached.
It is just from this particular spot that a glimpse of Elm Lodge can be had.
She leans languidly against an old oak, with the grass, which is yet virgin from the Sun-god’s kisses, making a dainty green carpet for her little feet.
Poor little Zai! A daughter of Belgravia is a traitor to her creed, for she is honestly, desperately in love.
If Carl Conway could see her at this moment, men are such slaves to beauty that he would be doubly enamoured of his little sweetheart. The background of dark green glossy foliage throws up almost too vividly her lovely white flesh tints and her slender statuesque figure. Her hands are folded loosely together, and a far-off expression lurks in her big, luminous grey eyes, half veiled by broad, drooping lids and long, curling lashes.
Zai is dreaming—“only dreaming.”
Her dreams are: