She is so handsome, though, in her wild gipsy beauty, that he rouses out of his insular quiet ways of thinking, and decides that it would be a pity to tame her defiant spirit, or to hush the ringing tones of her voice.
“Would a Romeo suit you?” he questions, in such soft womanish accents that her scarlet lips curl as she listens.
“To smother me in sweets, do you mean? oh, no, Sir Everard! Aucun chemin des fleurs ne conduit à la gloire, you know, and I have lived such a work-a-day life, before I was brought into the sacred precincts of Belgravia, that to me, love and glory and ambition are synonymous words.”
“I have it!” he cries gleefully, like a schoolboy who has succeeded in unravelling a problem of Euclid. “After running through this list of celebrities, I have pitched on the right one to please you; now, ’pon honour, isn’t it a Marc Antony you like best?”
“Perhaps he touches me nearer, only I am of such a horrible avaricious nature, and my ambition is so insatiable, that I should prefer some one who would gain a world for me, instead of losing one.”
“Almost a fool could do that,” he murmurs naïvely, and she, remembering Lady Beranger’s opinion of him, bites her lips to control a laugh. “I am sure I could aim at anything if you were not such a bright and particular star, and I could hope to reach you,” he goes on pêle-mêle, mixing up prose and poetry in a helplessly dismembered fashion.
Gabrielle laughs out freely at this, a laugh that is a perfect death-blow to sentiment although it is harmonious.
“Now, that’s a charmingly turned speech,” she replies, “I might almost fancy you a Frenchman. I am sure you have nothing to improve on it in your quiver, so on the principle of a bonne bouche we’ll go in and report to Lady Beranger that the others have not come in yet. I am afraid she will be angry at such a defiance of the bienséances,” she adds, but she thinks:
“Not that she will mind a bit, she will only think Lord Delaval is having it all his own way with the aid of his handsome face and that oily tongue of his.”
The two move off, and the lace curtains fall back into their place.