But before Zai has a reply, Lady Beranger steps in with her low imperious voice: “I am shocked at you both. Can it be possible that daughters of mine, girls supposed to be well-bred, should discuss such subjects, and throw yourselves into the violence of washerwomen, proving yourselves no better than the _canaille_ in question. Zai, I see it is useless to try and reason with you. However, as I am your mother I am entitled to obedience, and I order you to abstain in the future from the society of Mr. Conway, so that, however much folly you may be guilty of, others will not be able to comment upon it.” No answer, but Zai’s lids droop, and from beneath them big tears roll slowly down her cheeks, and her mouth quivers like a flogged child’s. “What a poor weak thing she is,” Gabrielle thinks. “Why doesn’t she hold her own, and set that mother of hers at defiance?” But Zai does not care for defiance. Even in Belgravia she has been taught to honour her father and her mother, and her natural instincts are all for good. “I must say, Zai,” Lady Beranger goes on coldly and cruelly, “that it is a wonderment to me, this romantic, _low_, fancy for that young man. The whole thing reflects on the proper amount of pride you ought to possess. Has it by any chance struck you what this Mr. Conway, this _actor_, must think of you?” “What _could_ he think of me?” Zai asks quietly, with level half-closed eyes, but her assumption of courage is only skin deep. Anything unpleasant or invidious about _this actor_, as her mother scornfully calls him, causes her to tremble inwardly like an aspen leaf--her love, her own dear love, who, in her opinion, is higher than king or kaiser, simply because he is _himself_. Lady Beranger calmly returns the gaze, and as she replies the words drop slowly from her lips, with a cool and merciless decision that is unwarrantable, considering that there are two pairs of ears besides Zai’s to listen. “Mr. Conway may think, without being especially vain, that he has made, without any effort of his own, a conquest of a silly love-sick girl, who has not enough of self-respect to conceal from him or others the magnitude of her folly.” Zai gives a half-suppressed cry of indignation, a cry that makes even Trixy forget she is a languid odalisque, and start from the repose of her downy cushions. “How dare you insult me so, mamma!” Her tone strikes like an electric shock on her audience, and Lady Beranger, pushing her chair back, rises and stands tall and regal in her wrath. “Zai, have you lost your senses that you presume to address me so?” she asks in slow cutting accents. Zai gives a gasp and shivers from head to foot, then she grows suddenly calm but for the storm in her eyes. Those grey eyes of hers--holy as a Madonna--are strangely disturbed, and their iris is several shades deeper.