“Why don’t you preach all this to Trixy, then? She is practical in her greed for gold. You know all my rhapsodies may be purely theoretical.” “It would be a waste of time and breath to preach to Trixy. She has not a tenth part of your common sense, Gabrielle, and she cannot be held so accountable for her actions. Of course, mamma has literally coerced her into this awful match. She will endure the existence she has in prospect better than I should do, however. She won’t think of Mr. Stubbs and his vulgarity while she has fine dresses and jewels. Sometimes I believe these things constitute her ideas of real happiness, do you know! But you, Gabrielle, are so different; if you pretend to lack a heart, at any rate you don’t lack brains.” “No, I certainly don’t,” Gabrielle answers conceitedly. Lack brains! Why it is on these very brains that she relies to bring honey and roses into her life, to get her luxury and ease, purple and fine linen, such as she loves actually quite as much as Trixy does: but has the _savoir faire_, or rather cunning, to keep her petty weaknesses locked up within the citadel of her own breast. For a woman--and a young one--few could hanker more greedily after the flesh-pots and the silken attire of the children of Heth than this girl does. To deck her ripe glowing beauty in the splendour of satins and velvets and soft bright hues, to see her long graceful throat encircled by the gleam of oriental pearls, her dusky braids crowned with a diadem of glittering brilliants, has been the dream of her life. Ever since the old days when she loved to don a faded scarlet bow or a tarnished gilt brooch, to queen it over her sister _gamins_. “By the way, Zai, I found out last night, that Baby has accepted old Archibald Hamilton! It was only by chance, as the little brat wants to keep the matter a secret from us for a while, I believe.” “Baby!” cries Zai, in amazement. “And yet I ought not to be surprised, for I might have read the news in Lord Delaval’s face when he looked up from beside her at tea last night. I expect he likes _embarrass des richesses_, and is angry that even one of his worshippers should secede from her homage.” “It is no reason, because Baby gives her fat, dimpled hand to old Hamilton, that she should consider it necessary to close her heart to the fascination of her quasi lover!” says Gabrielle, with her Balzacian ideas, ideas that find no response in the pure mind of Zai. “I can’t stay chattering any longer, Gabrielle,” she says hurriedly, and in the twinkling of an eye she is gone; and, as Gabrielle looks up surprised at her summary departure, she sees the tall figure of Lord Delaval slowly crossing the lawn towards the house, and guesses at once why Zai has disappeared in such haste. She bends forward, and, with wildly beating heart and tightly clenched hands, eagerly watches him.