Like so many poor boxes, they are ready to receive the smallest donation—a smile—a word—his arm for a promenade—or his hand for a dance. Yet even while apparently engrossed in wholesale flirtations with the fairest of the sex in the room, even while lavishing soft nothings, pressing fingers, he finds himself covertly looking again and again, and fervently admiring the slender figure in its old-fashioned quaint costume, the fair sweet face of the girl who he knows is over head and ears in love with “that actor fellow.” Despite himself and his anger he cannot help secretly owning that never did woman exist more fitted to wear the purple, and to don the Delaval coronet than this one, and he resolves to win her—somehow.
Having “put down his foot” on this point, he feels that all flirtations with Carlton Conway, Rayne and all others must end, that he must clearly make it understood that such doings must stop.
Flirt though he has been himself ever since he dropped round jackets and donned the toga virilis, and flirt though he probably intends to remain until the very end of the chapter, he has not the slightest idea of allowing his wife to indulge in the same amusement.
No! no! no! a thousand times no!
The woman of his choice must be an exceptional being, and a very different stamp of woman to the puppets of the Belgravian salons, with whom he has been in the habit of dallying and associating, and with whom he has passed so many hours of agreeable foolery.
Cæsar himself may of course do what he likes, but we all know what is expected from Cæsar’s wife.
It is an old, old story—carried down from generation to generation, and alas! for the honour of Society, a story infinitely more theoretical than practical.
The hours go on towards midnight—the crowd is suffocating, the heat intense, the gaiety at its height.
Since they entered the room, all the Beranger girls have been dancing, they are not the sort to personate wallflowers, none of them, and Zai in particular has not been five minutes under her mother’s ample wing.
Instead of looking worn out, however, she seems in higher beauty and gayer spirits then usual, when Lord Delaval again approaches her.