“Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmation strong
As proofs of Holy Writ.”
“Allow me to congratulate you, Zai,” Gabrielle says with a sneer.
Zai leans against the casement, idly toying with a spray of deep red roses she has just plucked from the trails that cover the wall hard by. She is very pale, and dark shadows underline her pretty eyes, and her thoughts are evidently far away, for she starts visibly as Gabrielle’s voice falls on her ear.
“Congratulate me, and what for?” she answers rather bitterly.
Congratulations indeed! when her poor heart is so sore, her spirit so wounded by Carlton Conway’s apparent defection last night.
“On your conquest of Lord Delaval,” Gabrielle flashes out. “What a horrid little hypocrite you are, Zai! To think of how you spoke of him only yesterday morning and how you flung yourself at his head last night!”
“I don’t understand,” Zai murmurs, but her cheeks are quite flushed now and her grey eyes droop, for she remembers perfectly how, to pique Carl, she had flirted, as folks might think, with Lord Delaval.
“Zai! Zai! I thought you never told lies, and now you stand there in broad daylight uttering a monstrous falsehood.”
Upon this, Zai bursts into an uncontrolable passion of tears, and flinging herself on the sofa presses down her face on the cushions.
Gabrielle attempts neither soothing nor scolding. To her such emotion is a display of childishness for which her hard nature has no sympathy. She rests calm and unmoved in her chair, languidly inhaling Eau de Cologne and occasionally sprinkling herself with a fragrant shower while she waits for the tears to subside.