Poor little Zai! A daughter of Belgravia is a traitor to her creed, for she is honestly, desperately in love. If Carl Conway could see her at this moment, men are such slaves to beauty that he would be doubly enamoured of his little sweetheart. The background of dark green glossy foliage throws up almost too vividly her lovely white flesh tints and her slender statuesque figure. Her hands are folded loosely together, and a far-off expression lurks in her big, luminous grey eyes, half veiled by broad, drooping lids and long, curling lashes. Zai is dreaming--“only dreaming.” Her dreams are: “Dim and faint as the mists that break At sunrise from a mountain lake,” but they are evidently pleasant, for a soft smile passes over her lips, and her face seems to overflow with sunshine, while all manner of entrancing dimples spring into life, and make a “_parfait amour_” of her as our neighbours across the Channel say. Perhaps an acute physiognomist would find something wanting in the fair sweet, girlish face, a power, a firmness, character, in fact, but few of us are true physiognomists, even if acute ones, and very few eyes, especially masculine ones, would discover flaws in the entrancing beauty that has caught Carl Conway’s worldly heart. There is a wistful look in Zai’s face however, which does not deteriorate from her attractions. It has come with the thought that just there over the clump of swaying pines, is the house where Crystal Meredyth lives, and where Carl is staying. “Zai!” Zai has been a fixture against the oak tree for an hour, and so absorbed in her thoughts that the far-off expression lingers in her glance as she turns slowly round. “Yes, Gabrielle.” “Your mother wants you. Her ladyship’s keen instinct divined that in all probability you were mooning away your time out here.” “Mooning, Gabrielle, what a word.” “A very good word, and an expressive one. All Belgravia speaks slang now; it has become quite fashionable to imitate the coal-heavers and the horsey men, and I don’t dislike it myself. It is far better than the refined monotonous twaddle of those horrible convenances.” “Do you talk slang to Lord Delaval?” Zai asks with a smile. “_Pas si bête!_ I leave that till I have landed my fish!” “I often wonder, Gabrielle, if you really care for that man, or if you are only trying to catch him.” “Both, dear. The first feeling naturally induces the last inclination. But we can’t stay chattering here; lunch is ready and the stepmother wants you.” “What for?” asks Zai, with unusual petulance. She does not want to leave this charmed spot, with the big trees arching overhead, the swallows foolishly whirling round and round up in the sky, the sunlight falling on hollow and glade and dell, and just over there the house where her Carl dwells.