Ever since Baby’s marriage to Archibald Hamilton had been hinted at by Lady Beranger, and he had suspected Zai’s weakness for the popular actor, he had insinuated a passion, if he had not one, for Gabrielle. It may be that her evident liking for him, and her undeniable personal attraction, had touched him; but--probably it was only a selfish gratification he is given to seeking. “I am so glad to find you alone. I wanted to see you so much,” he says in a quiet outspoken fashion, that to a girl who hates what she terms the insincerity and shams of society is, in itself, fascinating. “You wanted to see me, and you are glad to find me alone!” she repeats, then, to cover the nervousness his proximity always brings, she adds flippantly: “Really, Lord Delaval, if Lady Beranger heard you she would drop at such a breach of the _convenances_.” “Possibly,” he answers coolly, “but hang the _convenances_. Don’t you know that there are times in every fellow’s life when he comes into collision with the conventionalities, and either breaks them, or else risks being broken by keeping them? So long as I can run with my Juggurnauth, alias ‘Society,’ I am content, but I cannot throw myself before it and get mangled. Do you know I rather fancied I had a chance of finding you alone here, and so I determined to make chance a certainty?” Gabrielle gives him a quick glance of surprise, while her heart throbs faster than it has ever done before in the six-and-twenty years she has lived. Lord Delaval has often _looked_ love at her--hinted at love, but he has never gone as far as this. She has met him by appointment once or twice; still, nothing has been said to make her believe he really cared for her. Now she reddens like a rose, and feels a nervous tremor run through her, and yet his manner is scarcely like a lover’s. There is, in fact, nothing in what he says that could not pass as the ordinary talk of Society, yet the conversation seems lifted out from an ordinary atmosphere. They two, Lord Delaval and herself, are alone, and he talks to her just as if they were disembodied spirits. There are men occasionally in this world who have the power of bringing a woman they approach into direct contact with their own natures. They have a special gift of penetration, and one feels that in whatever relation one meets them, it is sustained by one’s _real_ self towards an equally _real_ individuality on the other side. Lord Delaval always makes Gabrielle feel this, and his intense manner adds to the feeling, but, with the supreme wilfulness of her nature, she refuses to yield to the magnetic influence he has over her without, at any rate, a struggle.