Mrs. Alexander Fraser

“ Do you care for Delaval the least bit in the world?” he asks earnestly, longing for her to deny the existence of any liking for his rival, to protest the enormous height and depth and width of her love for himself.
“Not yet—but,” Zai adds slowly and meditatively, “if I marry him I shall do my best to care for him, and even if I didn’t—what of it? Do people in our world deem it necessary to care for the man or the woman whom they marry?” ”

“ Only last night you flirted horribly with Zai. Before, it was in Baby’s ear you whispered your soft nothings. It was Baby’s hand I have seen you furtively clasp. I know therefore that the love you profess for me is all stuff and nonsense! that playing with women’s feelings is delicious food for your vanity. But why you should pick me out, why I should be a butt for you, I am sure I can’t guess! I don’t care to believe that because I am what Lady Beranger thinks me, that you want to insult me! ”

“ Society hasn’t much romance in its composition. Society does not know, and would not credit that Zai Beranger wanders by day and night, blind to external influences, with a buckler girded on her heart on which is written ‘Carlton Conway.’ And{12} if Belgravia cannot comprehend such high-flown sentiment, is it strange that I, born and bred amongst the canaille, with unlimited faith in the practical and matter-of-fact, and with a contempt for the foolish and the sickly romance of women, cannot help doubting and blaming you? ”

“ Hargreaves as soon as you like.”
He stares at her like a man in a dream, and as he lifts his eyes to her lovely little face, Baby’s snowy lids droop over her cerulean orbs, while her mouth twitches with something between a quiver and a smile.
He is not a gentleman born and bred, but he has a heart that can love. Blue blood may not flow in his veins, but honest,{185} devoted, even chivalric feelings live in his breast, and he knows that this girl—in spite of the words she has just spoken—is a thing he dare not grasp. ”

“ I knew that you would never give to any man that which was not his—for you are dreadfully proud and cold and{34} hard at the core, and when I found out, a day or two ago, that unconsciously I had learned to love you—do you hear me?—to love you with my whole being—when I found out that nothing short of an entire surrender of your soul—of yourself—would satisfy me, I trembled at the vision of bliss or torture that possibly lies before me—look at me, Gabrielle! ”

“ You know that people in your world cannot subsist on sentiment, or on a few paltry hundreds a year. I am, I avow, one of those miserable devils to whom the bitter irony of fate has given the tastes and habits of a gentleman, without the means of supporting them. You are the corresponding woman. Common sense—the commonest sense—will tell you whether or not it would be sheer madness for us two to marry, although we love each other so passionately, Zai! ”

“ And five minutes afterwards Trixy sees her on a rustic bench under a big elm tree, and Lord Delaval lying at her feet. Trixy watches them a moment. What a handsome couple they make. She sighs as she looks at them, and rather envies Zai the good looks of her lover. Then she turns away and murmurs in a tone of resignation:
“A handsome man always wants worshipping, while I like to be worshipped myself, and another thing, poor old Stubbs won’t ever make me jealous!” ”

“ As she and Percy Rayne fall into the line which just now is promenading the long room in the interludes of dancing, the Foreign Office clerk is conscious of that pleasant thrill of complacency—a sort of moral and even physical inflation—which a man feels when escorting a woman whose beauty glorifies her escort.
Zai’s card is soon full—so full that only one waltz remains, which she guards pertinaciously. She is determined to valse it with Carl, even if the heavens fall. ”

“ She is sore at heart about Carl. She would give a good deal to show him that if he does not appreciate her there are others who do; and what could be a greater triumph for her than to leave the Duchess of Caryllon’s ball the future Countess of Delaval. She would be more than the bright, gay, and rather spoilt girl Belgravia has made her if she did not hesitate before she rejects this triumph over Carl and “that Miss Meredyth,” who, of course, knows that she has usurped Carl’s heart. ”

“ The weather is true summer, and the little lazy breeze that floats across the Serpentine is a boon to man and beast. Right away in the upper portion of Kensington Gardens, the trees throw down some grateful shade, and Challen’s riding-school wend their way down the broad walk at a snail’s pace, for the heat is awful.{177}
Up above there is not even a cloudlet to temper the sun’s rays; the sky is as clear and as blue as Baby’s own eyes, and everything around looks as bright as her smiles. ”

“ It is you—you that I love, not a part of you, not an ideal being of you, not what you represent to other men’s eyes, but what you are with your thousand imperfections, even blots. Nothing, Gabrielle, will change me towards you, for I have only given you{38} what is yours by the law of affinity, and you, Gabrielle—well, I defy you to say that you are not wholly and solely mine. ”

“ 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 sill of the casement.{23}
There is always a peculiar directness, an odd sort of intimacy in his manner towards her, whenever they are thrown alone together, that produces at once a most unconventional effect. ”

“ 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{15} 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!” ”

“ The cool night air passes quietly by, lifting up the chesnut tendrils of hair that stray on to Zai’s{142} brow and fanning her poor hot temples. The time is flying by, and someone will be coming this way, but nevertheless Carlton Conway cannot end this interview without a few more words.
“And you will of course let Lady Beranger persuade you into marrying Delaval?” he asks, jealously—angrily.
Like the dog in the manger, he does not want the girl himself but he grudges her to another man.
Jealousy is a passion that is often wonderfully independent of the passion of true love. ”

“ Perfect love is when one meets someone to whom one can give all, and from whom one desires all.”
“Imperfect affinities are all that most people in our world know of love, and,{33} Gabrielle, Belgravia is horribly ignorant, do you know? Being so, they call a part of such and such a thing the whole, and demand allegiance of one’s whole nature to a feeling that belongs to, and feeds but a small part of it! Now, Gabrielle—my beautiful, tempting Gabrielle! you and I have this in common, that we hate sham, and never pretend to fine sentimental feelings unless we possess them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am fit for nothing but Society, and Society would not recognise me if I was poor and struggling, so we should simply mar each other’s lives and render each other miserable. And, Carl,” she tries to speak calmly but the effort is terrible, “I could not bear poverty and neither can you, though—— ” She breaks down completely, large tears chase one another down her cheeks, but she dashes them away, wroth at herself for her weakness and want of pride. ”

“ Only a few hours more and Baby is gone!{193}—gone with her smiles and her wiles, her coaxing ways and her naughty ways—gone to that land which only faith can pierce and where only love can follow.
There is not a dry eye in the household, when with awesome spirit and noiseless tread they go in to see the last of her. ”

“ Let us own that a woman must be composed of very strange materials who does not feel that it is charming to be young and pretty, considering that youth and beauty are the recognised weapons for slaughtering men’s hearts.
Lady Beranger has always a fancy for “her own party” when she goes to a ball, and on this occasion the dinner in Belgrave Square has three additions to the family circle—Mr. Stubbs, Archibald Hamilton, and Percy Rayne—a connection of Lord Beranger’s—a clerk in the Foreign Office, good-looking, harum-scarum, a pauper, and a detrimental. ”

“ Gabrielle is a rare actress by nature, and her vocation in life is the stage assuredly.
“Do you mean to tell me then that you are not engaged to him? If so you are certainly most indiscreet. All I know is, that if I descend to afficher myself before society with anyone, I shall take some man I like, and not one I was always professing to detest!”
“I do detest Lord Delaval!” cries Zai,{5} in as shrill a tone as her bird-like voice can take. “I don’t profess to detest him, but I detest him with all my heart and soul, and you know it.” ”

“ Yet even while apparently engrossed in wholesale flirtations with the fairest of the sex in the room, even while lavishing soft nothings, pressing fingers, he finds himself covertly looking again and again, and fervently admiring the slender figure in its old-fashioned quaint costume, the fair sweet face of the girl who he knows is over head and ears in love with “that actor fellow.” Despite himself and his anger{110} he cannot help secretly owning that never did woman exist more fitted to wear the purple, and to don the Delaval coronet than this one, and he resolves to win her—somehow. ”

“ 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!”{16}
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.” ”

“ There is a quiet command in his voice which she never attempts to resist. To everyone else sharp, caustic, cold, and full of sneers, to this man she is the humblest of slaves; his, to do with as he wills. A daughter of Belgravia, with Lady Beranger’s worldly-wise notions dinned into her ears, and with worldly, ambitious women examples for her in daily life—of this man she wants nothing, only himself ”

“ Miss Mirabelle, for God’s sake don’t go and make me forget what I am. I try night and day to remember the distance between us, and though I could go down on my knees and worship you all my life—though I could die for you willingly—willingly, I know I dare not live for you! I love you—there! Only God knows how I love you, but it isn’t a love like a fellow gives to his sweetheart! It’s a love like a faithful dog, that would lick your pretty hand and be content ”

“ I have heard papa and mamma, and Gabrielle, and all the others talk of ‘common sense,’ but one grows tired sometimes of hearing the same thing.”
The tone of her voice tells more than her words; there is a betraying quiver in it that makes him turn quickly and look at her.
The eyes that meet his own have great glittering tears in them. Never in her life has Zai looked more lovely or more lovable{138} than at this moment, and Carl recognises fully all that he is sacrificing for money. ”

“ She would give anything to pique him now that he is so engrossed with this girl who has money.
“The next dance is Mr. Bayne’s; at least his name is on my card,” she goes on.
Lord Delaval bows—not a bow like the one Carlton Conway has given her just now, but a bow on the Grandison model. His taste and tact are perfect; nothing would induce him to dispute a point of this kind; but a look steals over his handsome{106} face which is not common to it when Zai is its object—a look of cold hauteur, a look that has even a soupçon of dislike in it. ”

“ 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{27} 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. ”