“Gabrielle, if you are going out, I wish you could drag Zai with you. She sits moping in the grounds after that horrid actor fellow until her brain will soften to keep her heart company. What a frightful anxiety marriageable daughters are!” “Poor dear martyr,” Gabrielle murmurs. “I do believe I am the only consolation you have in your troubles, though I do jar on your nerves, and am perpetually kicking against those tiresome convenances.” Lady Beranger smiles icily. “You certainly give me less trouble than Trixy and Zai, as far as love and marriage are concerned,” she replies pointedly. “In fact, it would perhaps be better if it were otherwise!” and Gabrielle, who is sharp as a needle, colours, and understands that the speech is simply a taunt that no one has offered to take her off her stepmother’s hands. When she is quite alone Lady Beranger breathes more freely. “I distrust that girl,” she mutters. “She is so intensely clever and cunning, yet she might be a help to me. She loves Lord Delaval desperately, and to gain her own ends she will make Trixy marry Stubbs, and Baby Mr. Hamilton. So far, so good. Both men are rolling in wealth, and she will be so afraid of Lord Delaval fancying Zai, that she will force her into being a duchess or a princess. Zai is such a little fool, Gabrielle can twist her round her little finger. As for Conway, it is no use my bothering myself about him. Men in his position must find their own level; and only annoy like the sting of a passing gnat.” Just as she comes to this conclusion a loud rat-tat resounds through the big house. It is not a refined or timid knock, but decidedly obtrusive, yet it does not, strange to say, offend the delicate ear of Belgravia. Lady Beranger draws herself together, as it were. She has been considerably ruffled at afternoon tea, but she composes her face into the sweet serenity it generally wears before the world. “Show Mr. Stubbs in,” she desires, when the powdered flunkey hands her a card. “And, Theophrastus! not at home to any other visitors.” She knows that the gentlemen staying at Sandilands have driven some distance, and are not likely to be back till dinner-time. So she is safe to prepare the way for Trixy’s future benefit. After all, is it worth while to envy Lady Beranger her charming home? or would not a dinner of herbs, when love and truth and honesty abound, be preferable to the stalled ox, and strife and scheming? “How do you do, Mr. Stubbs?” she says, graciously, when a short, very obese man, and plain of feature, walks into the boudoir. He is very red in the face, both from exercise and from fond expectations, and he is not very ready of speech. Lady Beranger eyes him keenly a moment from the top of his shining bald head to the foot, which is dumpy and decidedly plebeian. He is certainly not a typical lover for the fairest _débutante_ of 1886. But what matters?