The manner in which she lowered her eyes and pouted partook of nothing less than genius. Her white breast was still rising and falling charmingly in its frame of velvet and ermine, making the big octagonal diamonds hanging from her necklace throb with prismatic light, and altogether she was irresistible in her half-contrite, half-resentful mood. “You treat me like ... like a baby,” she murmured, pettishly. “And yet I am your wife, and I have my rights, haven’t I?” “Most decidedly!” he agreed, repressing a smile with difficulty. What was coming now! “Well, then,” she went on, twisting the little chain of decorations in his buttonhole between her slim fingers, “why should I not feel hurt when you show me, so _very_ rudely, that I am not first in your thoughts?” Basil, greatly amused, laughed outright. “So, so!” he said, gaily. “You have discovered all by your own wee self that you are not first in my thoughts! What a clever little woman it is, to be sure! Especially under present circumstances. You should be mightily proud of such a painstaking and praiseworthy achievement.” “You can laugh!” she cried, leaping from his knee and confronting him, her cheeks flaming with real indignation. “You can laugh as much as you please, but I’m not laughing ... not laughing at all, I assure you ... nor would you if you knew how you have offended and affronted me.” “Is this serious?” Basil asked, getting to his feet after one painfully astonished glance at her. “A joke must not be carried too far, you know, my dear.” Laurence blushed crimson. She was as yet a novice at such a game, and her lord and master looked extraordinarily imposing, towering there in that _bijou_ room, walled and ceiled with white plush, like an _écrin_ made to hold a pearl. For the first time she saw new possibilities in him, and a cold shudder ran down her back. Was she to resort again to tears, she quickly reflected, or was it wiser to fight the matter out, and obtain the mastery, now and at once? “Are you serious?” he repeated, sternly enough now; and she winced. “Quite serious,” she murmured, trying to steady the trembling of her lips. “It is sickening to see you lost in admiration before your cousin and everything your cousin does.” “Régis? In admiration before Régis?” he queried. “You know very well I don’t mean Régis--I mean Marguerite--your precious ‘Gamin.’ The ‘_Chevalier Gamin_,’ as her foolish father and you call her.” Basil stepped nearer to her, put the tips of his fingers on her shoulders, and turned her face to the full glow of the wax lights burning in tall candelabras near by. “What do you mean, Laurence?” he said, quietly. “Is it that you are jealous of Marguerite de Plenhöel?” “Yes,” she admitted, attempting to shake him off, but without avail, for although he did not exert the least pressure, she knew that she could not rid herself of those well-controlled fingers which nevertheless weighed so little that she scarcely felt their touch.