True he does not care a snap of his fingers for her, but any woman, beautiful of face and form, is not an object to be disdained or rejected, and Lord Delaval is not the only voluptuary among the Upper Ten. Alone with the gathering shadows, and still wrapped in the presence that has left her, Gabrielle sits for an hour undisturbed. In the latter days she has thought several times that Lord Delaval had begun to recognise her claims to admiration, in spite of his flirtations with Baby and Zai, and alas! for Belgravian nurturing, it is a truth that the consciousness that her attraction for the man is _only a physical one_, in which her brains and soul bear no perceptible part, is far from being an unpleasant sensation. “How very shocking!” a few prim spinsters may exclaim, but it is nevertheless the truth and nothing but the truth. It may be that most women love to conquer with the legitimate weapon, _beauty_, of the sex. Poor plain Madame de Staël would willingly have exchanged all the laurels men laid at her feet for the tiniest, meanest blossom offered in a spirit of “_love_” or “passion” by them to women whom she justly regarded as her inferiors. Gabrielle forgets her cross, her mother’s low birth, Lady Beranger’s taunts and everything else unpleasant, as she positively revels in a sense of Lord Delaval’s admiration. Rising from the lounge, she walks to the mantelpiece, and placing her elbows on it stares in a fixed, almost fierce way, into the mirror. The shadows that flit over the room are broken here and there by a few last dying sunbeams, and her beauty is improved by the flickering light. The sweet eyes and soft red lips to which he had alluded, gain fresh merit since they are decoys to his erratic fancy, and have fanned the spark she has tried to ignite into a flame that has at last burst into words. Then between her and the mirror the superb face of her lover rises up, and the cheek that has just been pressed against his breast glows a lovely carmine, that is wasted on the unappreciative dusk, as she clenches her little fist, and swears in true and forcible Bohemian fashion to bring all her woman’s wit to aid in winning this man for her husband. Just at this moment Lady Beranger walks in, and without noticing her stepdaughter by word or look, throws herself a little wearily into an arm-chair. “What are you thinking of, _belle mere_?” Gabrielle asks after a little. “Thinking of! There is plenty to think of I am sure,” Lady Beranger retorts curtly. “I shall never be at rest till the girls are safely off my hands; unmarried daughters are the greatest responsibility breathing.” “I will try and lessen your burden,” Gabrielle says, in a bland voice, but with a curl of her lip which the dusk hides, “I’ll promise not to say ‘no’ if anyone asks me to marry him.” Lady Beranger laughs a sharp unpleasant laugh.