“Zai, the carriage is ready,” cries Baby, drumming her knuckles on the closed door.
Zai starts guiltily. What right has she to be murmuring love words to a man who will soon be another woman’s husband!
She clasps a pearl necklace round her throat, fastens a pearl star into her bonnie brown hair, then pauses one moment.
It is the first time in her life that she has ever had recourse to the foreign aid of ornament, and it seems quite an awful thing to her. But no one must guess at her feelings from her wan face to-night. She had not been proud with Carl because she loved him so, but she must be proud with the world, and not wear her poor desolate heart on her sleeve for daws to peck at.
She takes the two roses she plucked, pulls off their petals mercilessly, then rubs them on her cheeks, and flinging on her cloak she runs downstairs.
Lady Beranger is putting the finishing touches to her elaborate dress of primrose satin and point de Flandre, in which she looks like an empress, and only the three girls are assembled in the hall when Zai appears.
“How do I look?” she asks, throwing off her wrap. “Fanchette says I look belle comme un ange, and I want to be especially beautiful to-night!”
“What for?” three voices ask at once. “It’s only a State Ball, on the pattern of all the others we have been to. The Queen won’t be there to make anything different. So what on earth does it signify how you look?”
“I’ll tell you!” Zai says slowly and deliberately and unflinchingly. The rose petals hide the pallor on her cheeks, and the smile on her lips does away with the sadness in her eyes. “But, girls, you must keep it a secret from the Governor and Mamma. I want to look my very best to-night, because I intend to make my bow before the Princess as a future Peeress!”
Lady Beranger enters at this moment.