All the amber and purple and gold of the western sky has faded away, and only a faint rose glow lingers. The wind is dead, and soft and fragrant dusk lies like a mantle on the fair world, but the mantle of twilight is edged with the silver lustre of a tender young moon, and a shoal of inquisitive stars begin to peep at each other, when Gabrielle passes quickly upstairs and knocks at a door adjoining her own. “Come in.” Zai stands before her cheval-glass--a thing of beauty in a shimmering white silk, pore and virginal, a cluster of blush _Noisette_ roses nestle in her bosom, and there is a bright flush on her cheek that adds tenfold to her loveliness. “You have come for Fanchette, Gabrielle, but the bird has flown; only five minutes sooner you would have caught her. Trixy and Baby wanted her, and though I had not quite finished with her, I let her go.” “Trixy and Baby are the most selfish creatures I know,” Gabrielle answers captiously. “Why cannot they stick to Marie? I am sure they might teach her to dress them, without continually asking for Fanchette. _Au diable_ with those girls! Please don’t look so shocked, Zai. It is not half as bad as ‘Go to the Devil’ in English, and yet it is quite as relieving to one’s feelings. How on earth am I to get my hair done properly?” “For the Meredyths’ ‘At Home?’” “Of course. Do you know, Zai, Lady Beranger has asked Sir Everard Aylmer to go with us, and expressly confided him to my tender mercies.” Zai opens her eyes and laughs. “You see, Sir Everard has singled me out lately as an object of attention, and has actually talked to me for five consecutive minutes, somewhere about five times during our acquaintance--a frail basis to anchor hope on. Nevertheless, the step-mother, who, in spite of her ultra refinement, is an inveterate match-maker, has hatched a matrimonial project in her prolific brain for my benefit. You know I am like a bad shilling, always on her hands, and she would gladly see the last of me; but there is of course, as you know, another arrangement. She is anxious to kill two birds with one stone.” “What can you mean, Gabrielle? You have the most marvellous fertility of imagination that I have ever met with. If anyone drops a lash, you discover a reason for the action, and the most trivial word, lightly spoken, possesses a mountain of meaning to your mind. What motive can mamma have, but one?” “_Eh bien!_” “She knows Sir Everard Aylmer is rich and has an old baronetcy, and she wants you to make a good marriage. Sir Everard is quite an ‘eligible’ you know.” “Lady Beranger’s scheme doesn’t concern Sir Everard or poor little me. We are a couple of noughts in her eyes, and she is not going to trouble her brain with machinations about us. The head and the tail of the matter is--_Lord Delaval_!” “I _must_ be a simpleton or else you are too clever by half, Gabrielle. What on earth can you and Sir Everard and Lord Delaval have to do with one another?”