“I must say, Zai,” Lady Beranger goes on coldly and cruelly, “that it is a wonderment to me, this romantic, low, fancy for that young man. The whole thing reflects on the proper amount of pride you ought to possess. Has it by any chance struck you what this Mr. Conway, this actor, must think of you?”
“What could he think of me?” Zai asks quietly, with level half-closed eyes, but her assumption of courage is only skin deep. Anything unpleasant or invidious about this actor, as her mother scornfully calls him, causes her to tremble inwardly like an aspen leaf—her love, her own dear love, who, in her opinion, is higher than king or kaiser, simply because he is himself.
Lady Beranger calmly returns the gaze, and as she replies the words drop slowly from her lips, with a cool and merciless decision that is unwarrantable, considering that there are two pairs of ears besides Zai’s to listen.
“Mr. Conway may think, without being especially vain, that he has made, without any effort of his own, a conquest of a silly love-sick girl, who has not enough of self-respect to conceal from him or others the magnitude of her folly.”
Zai gives a half-suppressed cry of indignation, a cry that makes even Trixy forget she is a languid odalisque, and start from the repose of her downy cushions.
“How dare you insult me so, mamma!”
Her tone strikes like an electric shock on her audience, and Lady Beranger, pushing her chair back, rises and stands tall and regal in her wrath.
“Zai, have you lost your senses that you presume to address me so?” she asks in slow cutting accents.
Zai gives a gasp and shivers from head to foot, then she grows suddenly calm but for the storm in her eyes. Those grey eyes of hers—holy as a Madonna—are strangely disturbed, and their iris is several shades deeper.
“I beg your pardon, mamma!” she murmurs at last, with an effort. “When one is insulted, one does not stop to think who offers the insult. Perhaps this may excuse my having forgotten myself, but—” her voice waxes louder and her sweet mouth looks stronger—“if you think taunts or innuendos will estrange me from Carl, you are mistaken. I trust in him too entirely to believe he will ever think badly of me. I believe he loves me as much as I love him,” and Zai, having delivered herself of this, picks up her hat and leaves the room.