Only once she loses sight of worldliness, and permits the ghost of a frown to flit across her brow, as she whispers to her husband: “Is Zai with Delaval? I don’t see that Conway anywhere!” Lord Beranger shrugs his shoulders and answers nothing. Achille’s best efforts in _Salmis de Gibier, sauce Chasseur and Baba au Rhum_, are just ready, and he is evolving the momentous point of who he should take in. He would not make an error in such an important thing as precedence for all the world! a regular society man is always a stickler for absurd little trifles like these. Does the handsome Duchess of Allchester rank higher than the elegant and younger Duchess of Eastminster? He turns up his light blue eyes and puckers his forehead in the vain hope of calling up to mind the date of the dukedoms, but it is futile; this salient fact has entirely slipped from his memory. So he goes in search of the patrician lady who finds most favour in his sight. Lady Beranger, still in _statu quo_, turns towards a girl who has paused near, in the middle of a waltz. “Gabrielle, can you tell me where Zai is?” she asks in icy tones. The tone and the gleam in her eyes betoken dislike, and the girl addressed pays her back with interest. There is quite a ring of malicious pleasure in her voice as she answers her stepmother. “Zai wanted some supper after three dances with Carlton Conway, so he took her in to have some.” Lady Beranger flushes angrily, and vouchsafing no further notice of her “cross in life”--Gabrielle--walks away in her stately fashion, exchanging pleasant words or smiles as she goes, but throwing a hawk-like glance round the room all the time. Chafing inwardly at her stepdaughter’s answer, especially as it was made before Lord Delaval, she does a tour of the capacious _salon_, then dives through the crowd at the door of the supper room, and finally subsides on to a seat next to a fair-haired, blue-eyed, good-looking miniature of Lord Beranger. “Baby, have you seen Zai?” she questions, low but sharply. Baby Beranger looks up into her mother’s face with wide-open innocent eyes. It would be hard to credit the owner of such eyes with deceit, or such pretty red lips with fibs. Baby has such a sweet little face, all milk and roses, surmounted by little hyacinthine golden curls like a cherub’s or a cupid in a valentine, and her mouth is like an opening pomegranate bud, but no matter what her face expresses, she is born and bred in Belgravia, and is Belgravian to the backbone. “Zai, mamma!” she says innocently, “she is waltzing with Lord Delaval I think.” It is a deliberate falsehood, but it comes quite glibly from the child-like lips, and Baby, though she is only seventeen, has almost forgotten to blush when she does wrong. “_Gabrielle_ is with Lord Delaval,” Lady Beranger snaps crossly. “_She_ is not one to let the grass grow under her feet if she has an object in view.”