“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?”