“Blame has no effect on me,” Zai says rather defiantly, with her little head erect. She is astonished and irritated at the cool condemnatory way in which it pleases Gabrielle to speak. It strikes her that there is too much presumption in it, and her really sweet nature, trodden on, like the traditional worm, seems inclined to “turn.”
“But Lady Beranger is a slave to on dits, and she will lash herself into a fury if you don’t carry out her scheme of marrying you to Lord Delaval, after your curious behaviour last night.”
“It is mamma’s fault, and not mine that it happened; she is always throwing Lord Delaval and me together, and the whole thing is hateful to me.”
“Fiddlesticks! Mamma and lover being leagued, the odds are too much against you. You had better make up your mind to marry him; you will have to do so by-and-bye.”
Lord Delaval’s threat almost verbatim. Zai blanches with a sudden thrill of fear, and her heart gives a quick bound, but she says lightly:
“Nous verrons!”
“Nous verrons!” is the answer, and after a moment, Gabrielle goes on in studied accents: “I think it right to tell you, Zai, that I am resolved not to persuade you any more to marry Lord Delaval. I am a soldier of fortune, you know, and have to make my own way in the world; Lady Beranger deserves no tolerance from me, so I warn you, that I am going to try and serve myself, and if my interest clashes with anyone else’s I won’t yield an inch.”
“In other words, Gabrielle, you give me notice that you are going in for Lord Delaval, yourself! I am sure I wish you bon voyage in your undertaking. I hope you will find the result, if gained, a happy one.”
“I am not afraid, I never knew what fear was in my life. Cowardice in man or woman is the biggest crime in my eyes,” Gabrielle says with a dare-devil glance.
“But,” replies Zai, “why on earth should you consider it necessary to warn me of your project, I, who have no interest in the matter except to wish you happy?”
“Simply because I should wish the point made clear to you, so that you may not think me deceitful in the end. I owe the world —your world of Belgravia – nothing. But I have determined to take all I can gain from it by my woman’s wit.”
“Follow Trixy’s example, and sell yourself to the highest bidder you can find in my world, then!”
“No one has ever bid high enough for me,” Gabrielle cries bitterly, at the same time tossing her head with the proud air of a De Rohan. “Pariah, as I am, I have that which many of you Belgravians lack – the knowledge how to live. Mon Dieu! What a magnificent specimen of a grande dame I should make! Would that I were a peeress, and rich!”
Zai looks at her wonderingly, then she says quietly:
“I cannot think why people do not consider an inordinate desire for money sinful. It seems to me that money is at the bottom of every crime ever since our Lord Himself was betrayed for thirty pieces of silver.”
“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.
Everyone who knew Gabrielle, sooner or later, asked themselves if she had a heart; and nobody amongst those most intimate with her, had yet been able to answer the question at all satisfactorily, excepting Lord Delaval.
But he did not seem to deem it worth his while to study her at all, though indirectly, and at all favourable opportunities, he let her be fully aware through the medium of his handsome eyes and his voice that he knew she had a heart, and that it was one he read like an open book and found remarkably interesting.
According to Dickens, there are chords in the human heart – strange varying strings which are only struck by accident, which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch.
And so it is with Gabrielle.
She has reached over a quarter of a century.
Her nature is as passionate as that of a daughter of the south, and her early nurturing has been as wild and free as an Arab’s; but no man’s hand had struck the keynote of feeling until Lord Delaval put in an appearance on the scene.
He came, he saw, he conquered; and Gabrielle fell down at once, helplessly and hopelessly, to worship him.
CHAPTER II.
FLIRTATION
“What the years mean – how time dies, and is not slain, How love grows, and laughs, and cries and wanes again, These were things she came to know and take the measure, When her play was played out so for one man’s pleasure.”
Gabrielle’s cheeks grow crimson and her eyes glitter with pleasure, that for a little while they two will be alone, with no stranger to intermeddle with their joy, as she watches Lord Delaval approach nearer and nearer and finally step over the