He is Peter Stubbs, with a superb mansion in Park Lane, a gem of a place in Hampshire, and fifty thousand a year. Does it signify one atom if he is as hideous as a gorilla, or as old as Mount Horeb? Not in the very least. “Trixy will be so charmed to see you, Mr. Stubbs. She was just complaining of the country, and longing for some civilised London friend to come and enliven her--rustic neighbours are so very uninteresting, you know.” Mr. Peter Stubbs reddens as if he were developing apoplectic symptoms, and smiles till he looks even more ugly than his wont. “Did Miss Beatrix think of _me_ when she longed for that civilised Londoner?” he asks with a simper. Trixy enters at this moment and makes an unmistakable _moue_ at this question, but she is Lady Beranger’s daughter. While she has been donning her mauve costume and thinking how nice she looks in it, she has realised the gratification it would be to have a _carte blanche_ account at Worth’s. “Of course I did, Mr. Stubbs,” she gushes effusively, with a beaming smile, “do you think I have forgotten already our charming chats in Belgrave Square, and our teas at your paradise in Park Lane?” And she holds out a lovely plump hand, white as milk, which Mr. Stubbs takes and squeezes warmly. “I see Zai at the far end of the lawn, I want to speak to her, so excuse me for a few minutes, Mr. Stubbs,” Lady Beranger says with delicious affability. “Certainly! certainly! your ladyship. Miss Beatrix and I can manage to get along together remarkably well, I am sure; maybe we shall not mind if you find a good deal to say to Miss Zai,” he answers with a wink. “Cad!” Lady Beranger mutters to herself as she steps out of the French casement. “Cad! vulgar wretch! Trixy will be thrown away on him, that is, her beauty will--as for herself, she is so avaricious and selfish that his money will make up for everything. Good Heavens! whose voices are those?” She crosses the lawn noiselessly, threads the shrubbery, and steals behind a clump of elms. It is the identical spot where Zai had held her rose-coloured reverie this morning. A few paces further on, with the elm branches drooping low as if to conceal them from view, but with the yellow rays of the setting sun falling on them, two heads, one close-cropped, the other crowned with ruddy chesnut, had been very near to one another, and these heads belonged to Zai and that “horrid actor fellow.” Carl Conway’s arm had been round a slender waist, and Zai’s sweet face upturned so that a moustached lip might rest on her coral mouth; but when Lady Beranger sees these two culprits, they have said good-bye, and are a discreet distance from one another. [Illustration] CHAPTER IV. LORD DELAVAL. “We played at Bondsman and at Queen, But as the days change--men change too; I find the grey seas’ notes of green, The green seas’ fervent flakes of blue, More fair than you.”