“Then you would call a chimney-sweep a gentleman, Zai, if he happened to have been _born_ one,” Lady Beranger asks in a suave voice. “There is some difference between the calling of a sweep and an actor, mamma. You may all differ with me in my opinion on this subject, but I cannot help holding to my notions, and speaking them out truthfully.” “Truth is not always to be told, my pet. Whatever the ancients thought on the subject of unerring veracity, it is an exploded error! _Nous avons changé tout cela!_” Lord Beranger ordains with the air of a modern Lycurgus. “I shall never consider it an error to speak plain unvarnished truth, papa,” Zai says fearlessly. “One would think you had been born in Arcadia, and not in Belgravia,” Lady Beranger remarks angrily. “I only hope that Lord Delaval may feel more indulgent towards such _bizarre_ sentiments than I do.” “Of course Delaval will be indulgent. Did you ever know any young fellow who was not indulgent to a pretty girl’s fads and follies? There are men, and _men_, as Zai says. You are a peer, Delaval, and Conway is an actor. I have remarked that the feminine element, now-a-days, inclines to a weakness for the stage. Thespian votaries, what with their shows, and their glitter, their stereotyped smiles, their parrot love-making, have a subtle charm,” Lord Beranger suggests, more for an emollient for Lord Delaval’s evidently wounded vanity than for any genuine faith in his own words. “I think the difference in our callings is not the only distinction that Miss Zai makes between myself and Carlton Conway,” Lord Delaval says with a meaning glance that brings a scarlet flush to the girl’s face, and makes her lower her long curling lashes over her tell-tale eyes. Then he leans his handsome head against the tall backed chair he occupies, and watches the flicker of the lovely colour, and the lashes, through his half-closed eyes, with a glance she could not help to _feel_, although she studiously avoids meeting it. Lord Beranger moves away a few paces, and his better-half follows him, then Lord Delaval bends forward again till his breath sweeps Zai’s cheek, and he asks in a low concentrated voice that is inaudible to others: “There is another distinction between Carlton Conway and myself, is there not?” “Yes!” she answers frankly, for she glories in her love and her lover. “There is a distinction between you, and you know what it is.” “I do not know why you should think so well of him, and evidently so ill of me.” “Don’t you? then I will tell you. I believe Mr. Conway to be as open as the day, to have no narrowness in his heart, no pettiness in his soul. He could no more shackle himself with the opinion of “society” than he could stoop to do a mean thing. In fact I know he has such a true gentleman-like nature, that if he were reduced to a blacksmith’s calling he would be a gentleman in the estimation of all those whose judgment is worth having.”