“How should I know? Lady Beranger is not likely to confide her desires to such a heretic as myself; perhaps she does not think it quite the thing for the flower of her flock to stand like a marble effigy of love and patience for the under-gardener to gape at.” “As if I care _who_ stares at me!” Zai mutters with unwonted recklessness. “Of course you don’t, _pas le moins du monde_! Zaidie Beranger, a modern Galatea, that only her Pygmalion, Carl Conway, can rouse into feeling or life, must naturally be as impervious as the Sphinx to curiosity,” Gabrielle says mockingly, with an expressive shrug of her shoulders that, together with a slight accent, denote that she has only a part claim to English nationality. “Don’t chaff, Gabrielle, it is most unlady-like,” Zai says, imitating Lady Beranger’s slow solemn voice, and both burst out laughing. “But really I only came out for a whiff of fresh air; the house oppresses me. But there never is a bit of freedom at home, my mother never leaves me alone.” “Perhaps she has right on her side, just now. You are tanning your skin in this broiling sun, and looking ill from the heat.” “What _can_ it signify _how_ I look?” Zai cries contemptuously. “Only that Lord Delaval was deploring this morning how white and thin you were looking. He even hinted that you had gone off a little, although you have had only one season in London.” “Lord Delaval! Gabrielle. Pray, what right has he to indulge in personal remarks about me, and how much can _his_ opinion affect me, do you think?” Gabrielle colours angrily. “As for that, Lord Delaval is not isolated in the place he holds in your estimation. What is anybody’s opinion to you, you silly love-sick child, except one individual, and he is what Lady Beranger calls, a ‘detrimental,’ and the object of her unmitigated dislike.” “If you have only come out to vex me, Gabrielle, I think you had much better have stayed indoors and entertained Lord Delaval with more of those songs. Mamma calls them positively indecent; she says they are simply a ‘declaration’ under cover of music, and that thoroughbred girls should be ashamed to sing them. “I heard you singing to Lord Delaval this morning, Gabrielle, ‘Ah! je t’adore mon âme: Ah! je te donne--tout! tout! Et toi?--veux tu etre infame Ah! veux tu me rendre--fou?’ and, you _must_ say, it sounds like a declaration!” A deep crimson wave sweeps over the stormy face of Gabrielle Beranger, making her look like a beautiful fiend. A frown gathers unmistakably on her forehead, and the large but well-formed hand, that holds her parasol, clutches the handle like a vice, with a passion that the owner does not care to conceal. “So Lady Beranger said that? How dare she hit at my mother’s birth as she is always doing. I am sure it does not show her to have any of the delicate feelings which aristocrats are supposed to monopolise! And after all, she only took my mother’s leavings.”