“I hope you’ll prove yourself a paragon of strength, Zai,” she says, with a mocking smile. “Lord Delaval, to my idea, has such an absolute will that I sometimes think he has taken for himself the motto of Philip of Spain, ‘Time and I against any two.’ If I were you, child, I should take him and bowl Carl Conway over. There isn’t much of the right stuff in your beloved Carl, but in Lord Delaval there are possibilities of something far beyond the ordinary. Do you know, I think he and Randolph Churchill are much of a muchness, and you must acknowledge Lord Randolph is delicious; there’s a go about him which I love, and which makes up for his being a Conservative.”
“Gabrielle, if you admire Lord Delaval so much, why don’t you try and marry him yourself?” Zai asks suddenly.
Gabrielle blushes, blushes a fierce, unmistakable red; she does not often blush, for this is a habit less known in Bohemia than Belgravia even, but the blush after all is only the tell-tale of the storm of feeling within, and her voice is hard as stone as she answers:
“I! you forget I am Gabrielle Beranger, with a lot of muddy current in my veins, and only my face as my fortune. Lord Delaval probably regards me as a nought in creation, a social mistake; handsome and fastidious, he can look for a wife among the Royalties, if he likes.”
“Anyway, you must confess you are awfully in love with him, Gabrielle,” Zai cries, with a mischievous laugh, and once more Gabrielle colours like a rose.
“Silly child! I know my position too well for that.”
“I cannot understand why you should think so much of his standing—he is no better, socially, than all the other lords about town, and I cannot see why he should not marry a girl with whom he is always talking and flirting.”
“Flirting! Of course you think he flirts with me! You cannot believe that any man holds me in sufficient respect to treat me as he would you or any other girl of his own set. I should like to know if no one can really like me and not try to amuse idle hours by flirting with me, but I suppose that is too much to expect! I must be flirting material or nothing!”
Another silence falls on them after this outburst, then Gabrielle looks round and yawns.
“How I hate the country,” she avers, “it is full of dismal sounds; the cattle do nothing but moan, the sheep wail, ah! ah! ah! and nature is one unceasing coronach. I wonder how many days it is Lady Beranger’s will that we shall dabble in puddles, and look down empty roads. Do come along, Zai, your respected parent will kill me by the lightning of her eye if I go in without you. Just throw C. C. to the four winds, and come and make yourself agreeable to the menkind indoors.”