Apparently not—for even while she groans and moans over his shortcomings, a mighty love fills her for the man whom she adores with a wild, unreasoning, selfish passion, and whose happiness she would immolate unscrupulously, if it pleased her to have it so. It must be owned that Lord Delaval is both a flirt and a butterfly, and that he has played fast and loose with mostly all the pretty women he has come across.
Flirting comes to him as to the manner born; it lurks in his ultramarine eyes, in the corners of his mouth, in his voice, in his manners, and in his actions, and he thinks nothing of it.
Some women regret his love, some resign themselves to his fickle ways, but Gabrielle Beranger is not of the common herd. She is a law unto herself in all things. She can love well (in her fashion) and she can hate well, with her great black gleaming orbs, her white passion-tossed features, her tumultuous, unscrupulous spirit. She regrets now, bitterly, but she does not dream of growing resigned.
“Tout vient a celui qui sait attendre,” she mutters to herself.
Lord Delaval has laid a burthen on her which she cannot bear. She has but one stimulus left in life, but one object. It is to appeal to him—to his honour—to his love. If she fails—but she does not dream of failing.
One thing, she will separate the man she loves, and the man who has loved her, after the fashion of some men’s love, from her step-sister. If not now, she will some day, even if Zai marries him.
To her the words—“Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder,” are but idle prattle. A mere formula of the Church, a creed which her blind unbelief in all good things makes her mock at and fling aside like the voice of the wind.
Gabrielle is one part Belgravian and three parts French, and has the faults of both. Honour and loyalty are dead letters to such women. Strong and practical of nature, animal in instinct and passion, savage and cruel in greed of love, is it likely that women possessing such qualifications can wage war and be beaten?
Cunning, craftiness, deceit and falsity, ranged against truth, innocence, purity and simple mindedness, form a very uneven contest, my readers.
And, in spite of the pleasant doctrine that goodness rears its head over badness, it is a fact that human creatures of the Gabrielle Beranger type have often a better time of it in this world than their purer sisterhood.