“I really think Zai has softening of the brain,” Trixy says spitefully. “She never remembers that her folly and eccentricity may compromise me. People might easily mistake one sister for the other.” Spite is Trixy’s forte. Silky and saccharine, her tiny _pattes de velours_ are always ready to creep out and scratch. Her mother understands her nature, and tries to check feline propensities; but Trixy, like many of her sex, is a born cat. “Zai is more likely to compromise herself than you. She will establish a reputation for being queer, and damage her chance of securing an eligible _parti_.” “I wish there was no such word in English as eligible,” Gabrielle cries impetuously. “I hate the very sound of it. I suppose I am too low-born and democratic to appreciate the term. It seems to me, that every marriageable young woman should carry about a weighing-machine, and that, so long as Cyclops or any clod is heavily gilded--Hey! presto! he’s the man.” Lady Beranger gives her a slow, level look, and wonders why such savages as Gabrielle exist. “Please keep your _outré_ notions to yourself,” she remarks quietly. “My daughters have been taught to look on a good marriage as their due, and I am sure it never enters into their heads to degrade themselves by a _mésalliance_.” “I think poor men ever so much nicer than rich ones, mamma,” Zai murmurs deprecatingly, and her white little hands nervously clasping and unclasping. “Do you recollect Evelyn Ashley, mamma?” Trixy asks in a gentle, but hypocritical voice. “No one ever forgets that she fell in love with a riding-master, and was on the brink of eloping with him, when, luckily his horse threw him and he was killed. Of course, she is all right now, and very nice; but I don’t believe anyone worth speaking of would dream of marrying her.” “I am sure an _eligible_ never would!” Gabrielle says satirically. Zai’s grey eyes blaze, her little mouth quivers with excess of anger and indignation. “By introducing that episode of Evelyn Ashley I conclude you mean to insinuate, Trixy, that her disgraceful affair is a parallel to what you think are my feelings for Carl?” “Certainly. I call a riding-master quite as good, if not better, than an actor,” Trixy retorts coolly, though Carl Conway is as much in her head as in Zai’s heart. “Gentlemen and officers have been forced through adverse circumstances to earn their bread by teaching riding, at least one hears of such cases. Of course it is not likely for _me_ to have run across them,” she adds with supreme arrogance and a little curl of her pretty lip. “And you think anyone following the profession of an actor, from sheer love of his art, cannot be a gentleman? Not even if by birth he is one--and in fact related to the best blood in England?” Zai demands, quite haughtily, with a glitter in her glance which rather awes Trixy, who, like all bullies, is not very courageous when it comes to a stand-up fight.