He and Miss Mirabelle (who looks to-night too old for her appellation of Baby) make a pretty, lover-like tableau enough, as they sit close together in the embrasure of the window, ensconced in half shade, with the soft night, full of mystic stars, and the silent, fragrant flowers in the background. Yet Lord Delaval’s face, when he raises it from whispering in Baby’s ear, wears anything but a lover-like expression. Stolid indifference is in his handsome eyes, and a cynical smile on his lips, but the moment Zai enters, he grows more animated, and rising, walks towards her. “Don’t you think we shall be very late, Miss Zai? It is not a large affair, I hear, and we shall be disturbing Miss Crystal Meredyth in the middle of ‘_Tais toi mon cœur!_’” Zai winces slightly at Crystal’s name, but recovers herself at once. “May I not be allowed a cup of tea?” she asks, looking up at him with her big, grey eyes, in which he thinks there is something of the gleaming yet transparent lustre that water shows under a starlit sky. For a moment these eyes catch his fancy, and influence his imagination, but only for a moment. Lord Delaval at heart is a rock, and a rock that no woman’s hand has as yet succeeded in making a cleft in. “Yes, there’s time enough for that, and indeed, I will keep you company. Tea is a blessing to the race of mankind--and womankind, too,” he goes on languidly, as he sips. “But tea is a paradox; it calms one’s turbulent feelings, and yet it is a mighty stimulant and keeps one awake--and it is for this last of its properties that I indulge in it to-night.” “To keep you awake!” cries Zai, eyeing him rather contemptuously, as she listens to what she considers his soulless remarks. “Are you likely to fall asleep among the music and singing and chatter then, or are you so wrapped up in your noble self, that no one or nothing can interest you?” He wanted to provoke her to speak to him, and he has succeeded. Her contempt does not touch him a bit, in fact, it makes her more _piquante_, and gives a spice to society “twaddle.” There is an utter coldness in her towards him that frets his _amour propre_; it is so different to other women; and he longs intensely to subdue her, as he has subdued scores of girls whom he has desired to subjugate and make mere puppets in his hand. He draws his chair nearer to hers, and settles himself as if he has forgotten the flight of time and the disturbance of Crystal Meredyth’s favourite French ditty, and makes up his mind to try and draw Zai’s young heart into his net with the skill of an experienced fowler. Just at this moment, Mr. Stubbs finishes his cup of coffee at a gulp, and rising up in a perfect steam, betakes himself and his primrose-coloured kids to the lovely Sabrina opposite. “A man or a porpoise--which?” whispers Lord Delaval with a mocking smile, as he watches the millionaire’s progress across the room.