“You can have nothing to say to _me_, Lord Delaval, that all the world and the world’s wife cannot hear. Are you mistaking me by chance for Zai?” she asks, carelessly, but she has no control over her features, and the excitement of his presence lends them a flashing, bewildering beauty, that positively dazzles him--_pro tem.!_ He fixes his deep blue eyes on her with an expression of fervid admiration, and her lids fall beneath the passion of his glance, but she lifts them bravely, and meets his gaze full. “You really look as if you thought I did not mean what I say!” “And no more you do, _ma belle_,” he answers quietly. Outside the sun shines down furiously; the air is warm as an Indian summer. Up and down, up and down, the butterflies skim over the flowers, and a lazy rose-twig gives an inert tap on the window pane. Gabrielle does not reply. She feels shy, and as shyness is foreign to her, it is not only an uncomfortable, but a painful sensation. “You snubbed Aylmer last evening,” he says. “Yes!” she answers laconically. “But why? Did you forget how many good things he has to offer you? Most women would jump at such a match.” “_Soit!_ but _I_ don’t,” she answers indifferently. “Of course not,” he tells her. “I know you better than you know yourself--no one will ever know you as well as I do--and, still more, Gabrielle, no one will ever love you as _I_ love you! No, don’t start!” For she rises from her seat, feelings of various kinds surge over her, and she clasps her fingers tightly together. “Gabrielle, I have been longing to tell you this,” he goes on, in a concentrated voice, which has a deal of suppressed passion in it; “I see no reason for denying myself the expression of what is strong within me. I don’t want you to tell me that you love me, for I should hate to evoke from your sweet lips words that your _heart_ doesn’t force through them, in spite of _convenances_! I only want you to listen to me when, instead of dilating on the beauty of the weather, and so forth, I lay bare _my_ heart to you.” Gabrielle believes he is laughing at her, and the belief lashes her into fury. “Please, Lord Delaval, reserve your amusement for some one else. I am not of sufficiently elevated position for you to waste your breath on. Do you forget that Lady Beranger looks on me as a sort of social pariah, and almost a gutter-girl!” she flares out scornfully, her lips trembling, and looking doubly tempting in their wrath. Perhaps Lord Delaval, with his worship for pretty things, feels their increased attraction, for as his eyes fall on them, his manner grows really more impassioned. He moves closer to her side on the sofa, but she averts her head, and piques him by a feigned coldness. “I can’t see your face, Gabrielle! And I _want_ to see it while I talk to you,” he pleads quite tenderly. The tone touches her, not because she credits its sincerity, but because she has never dreamed that _he_ could ever speak to her thus.