Miss Meredyth, dressed in rose colour, with a sailor’s hat perched coquettishly on her fair hair, looks uncommonly pretty, and so Carlton Conway seems to think, for he is so engrossed in regarding her that the Berangers’ Victoria is passed unnoticed.
“I thought it was the Meredyth girl’s money the man was after, but he seems to be énormément épris,” Lady Beranger remarks indifferently, hoping the shaft will fly straight home and cure all remaining nonsense in her daughter’s head, or heart, or wherever it may be.
Zai answers nothing. With a sharp pang of misery and jealousy, she, too, has noticed how devoted Carl seems. Après cela le Déluge.
She is thankful when her mother orders “Home.” She is sick of bowing and smiling when she would like to lie down and die; but nevertheless she trips airily down to the dining-room, eats more dinner than is her habit, and after this goes into the conservatory and plucks a couple of the reddest roses she can find.
“Fanchette, make me awfully pretty to-night!” she coaxes, and the femme de chambre is nothing loth. Zai has every “possibility,” as she calls it, of being belle comme un ange, and more than satisfies her exquisite Parisian taste when her toilette is complete.
“She wants but two little wings to make her a veritable angel,” Fanchette says to the English maid who assists her in her duties. “Mees Zai is the flower of the house!”
“Flower of the flock, you mean,” Jane corrects.
“No, I do not,” Fanchette replies, offended. “I have never heard of flowers in a flock. I have heard of a flock of goose—and you are one of them.”
Meanwhile, Zai stands before her mirror. Her eyes are so sad—so sad, that they look too large for her small white face.
“Oh, Carl! Carl!” she says, half aloud, “you have forgotten me quite! And I love you—love you so much that my heart is broken, Carl!”