“Your attempts at wit are dreadful, Gabrielle,” Lady Beranger murmurs languidly. “Your tongue is, indeed, an unruly member.”
“I really think Zai has softening of the brain,” Trixy says spitefully. “She never remembers that her folly and eccentricity may compromise me. People might easily mistake one sister for the other.”
Spite is Trixy’s forte. Silky and saccharine, her tiny pattes de velours are always ready to creep out and scratch. Her mother understands her nature, and tries to check feline propensities; but Trixy, like many of her sex, is a born cat.
“Zai is more likely to compromise herself than you. She will establish a reputation for being queer, and damage her chance of securing an eligible parti.”
“I wish there was no such word in English as eligible,” Gabrielle cries impetuously. “I hate the very sound of it. I suppose I am too low-born and democratic to appreciate the term. It seems to me, that every marriageable young woman should carry about a weighing-machine, and that, so long as Cyclops or any clod is heavily gilded—Hey! presto! he’s the man.”
Lady Beranger gives her a slow, level look, and wonders why such savages as Gabrielle exist.
“Please keep your outré notions to yourself,” she remarks quietly. “My daughters have been taught to look on a good marriage as their due, and I am sure it never enters into their heads to degrade themselves by a mésalliance.”
“I think poor men ever so much nicer than rich ones, mamma,” Zai murmurs deprecatingly, and her white little hands nervously clasping and unclasping.
“Do you recollect Evelyn Ashley, mamma?” Trixy asks in a gentle, but hypocritical voice. “No one ever forgets that she fell in love with a riding-master, and was on the brink of eloping with him, when, luckily his horse threw him and he was killed. Of course, she is all right now, and very nice; but I don’t believe anyone worth speaking of would dream of marrying her.”
“I am sure an eligible never would!” Gabrielle says satirically.