“What a question!” cries Zai, flushing a little. “Now is it likely that he should want to marry me if he cares for my step-sister?”
“Cela selon!” Trixy replies carelessly, “Men don’t much mind that sort of thing. I heard Charlie Wentwaite only made love to Virginia South because he admired her mother!”
“You shouldn’t listen to such things, Trixy. Lord Delaval may have talked nonsense to Gabrielle, because she encouraged him, but I am sure he only cares for me!”
“And you—are you in love with him?” Trixy asks in a solemn voice, putting her hand on her sister’s shoulder, and staring at her fixedly.
But Zai cannot or will not meet this enquiring gaze.
She springs up from her chair and throwing up the window sash looks out on the fair world, the glowing fragrant roses and the clear blue sky overhead. There isn’t a fleecy cloud on the azure surface. Somehow all these things have a subtle charm of their own, and bring her an impetus to bury her dead past as fast as she can, and to begin a new era. So instead of answering Trixy, she plucks a rose with a deep blood-red heart and flings it deliberately at somebody who is lying his full length of six feet two inches on the sward, his straw hat thrown aside, and the daylight falling full on his very handsome blond face. His lids are closed, and he looks the picture of laziness—but a picture that most women would take the trouble to look at several times. As the rose falls full on the tip of his aquiline nose, he slowly opens his ultramarine eyes, and looks up at the face at the window with a depth of admiration and tenderness in the look that makes Zai blush and hastily withdraw her head.
“Yes Trixy!” she cries with quite a beaming smile. “I believe I am in love with him, anyway I intend to be directly I am Countess of Delaval!” And five minutes afterwards Trixy sees her on a rustic bench under a big elm tree, and Lord Delaval lying at her feet. Trixy watches them a moment. What a handsome couple they make. She sighs as she looks at them, and rather envies Zai the good looks of her lover. Then she turns away and murmurs in a tone of resignation:
“A handsome man always wants worshipping, while I like to be worshipped myself, and another thing, poor old Stubbs won’t ever make me jealous!”
END OF VOLUME II.
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