Fanchette, having arrayed Trixy and Baby for the Duchess of Caryllon’s fancy ball, finally seeks Zai. Zai—who still lies dreaming her love’s young dream in the soft twilight, while a star or two peeps down inquisitively through the open window upon the increased loveliness that love has called up on her sweet face.

Regretfully she rises at Fanchette’s entrance, and certainly no fairer daughter of Belgravia ever tripped through Belgravian salons. When her toilette is complete, Fanchette does wonders with her little artistic touches here and there, and Zai’s costume, though simple, is exquisitely picturesque.

The bodice is long-waisted; the stomacher thickly embroidered in pearls; the Vandyke corsage is low in front, with a high ruffle behind, and the whole makes a beau-ideal of the old time Maestros; ropes of glistening pearls go round the slim throat and are wreathed in the chestnut hair. The dress of Blanche of Navarre is marvellously becoming, and would be becoming to a plain woman. What, then, must it be to this daughter of Belgravia, to whom Nature has been lavish in seductive tints?—this girl with a beauty so very fair that

and who is very proud of herself, as she thinks that Carlton Conway will be at Caryllon House to-night, and will see how “nice” she looks.

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. Lord Delaval was asked, of course, but had another engagement. When all her brood is gathered together, Lady Beranger, in silver moire, with the Beranger diamonds (but no! not the Beranger diamonds, for they are under safe lock and key and surveillance of one of the many Attenboroughs—but the duplicates in finished Parisian paste, which are quite as lovely and costly to the uninitiated eye), steps into the family landau.

They are late, and the crush of the room is uncomfortable beyond description, like all London crushes. But great as it is, Zai makes a decided sensation as she wades through the crowd on Percy Bayne’s arm. Gabrielle is a Spanish gipsy; Trixy, Fair Rosamond; Baby, with her pink and white skin, golden hair, and white short draperies showered with rosebuds—a delicious piece of “Dresden”—but Zai to-night put every one into the shade. There is the usual quantum of sea-nymphs and flower-girls, characters from history and characters from fiction, of piquant costumes and of costumes which are chiefly remarkable for being bizarre.

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. Several ask for it, but she laughingly says she is keeping it for a friend. That friend does not, however, seem in any haste to take advantage of her generosity.

She has been nearly an hour in the room before she even sees him, and then he is talking earnestly to Miss Crystal Meredyth, and only acknowledges her by a formal bow; and to add to this, Crystal Meredyth makes a very lovely Ondine to-night. How strange it seems to her that he should bow like this, when only a week or two before he looked at her with all his soul in his eyes, at the Bagatelle Theatre!

Zai’s heart is full to bursting, and her red lips quiver a little; but while a weeping and gnashing of teeth is carried on inwardly, she returns his bow with one still more frigid.

And at this inopportune moment, Lord Delaval comes up to her.

“I think the next dance is mine?” he says, rather stiffly, offering his arm.

“You mistake,” Zai answers.

She does not wish to go off with one man when she can stand here, the centre of a group of jeunesse dorÉe—all begging for “one turn,” and this within earshot of Carl.

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 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.

“I understood the dance was mine,” he says, and quietly turning on his heel, he walks away. There are visible surprise and satisfaction among the butterfly youths at this little rebuff to the best match in Town—for lords of the creation, noble animals though they be, are yet creatures of weak mould.

But Zai’s conscience smites her.

That the dance is Lord Delaval’s she knew quite well when she allowed Percy Bayne to write his name over his. At the moment she felt a sort of perverse defiance of displeasure on the part of any man. But now she regrets having sullied her lips by a white lie, and she feels ashamed—as one always feels ashamed—when one has taken shabby advantage of the immunity which is chivalrously permitted a woman to do or say uncivil things by Society. It is a retributive justice perhaps, which accords her nothing for her incivility, for Carlton Conway, who is standing not far off, and alone—Miss Meredyth having gone off to dance—presently moves off too, without even a glance in her direction. It is really too much!

Blanche of Navarre’s grey eyes sadly follow his retreating figure, and with a decidedly sinking heart, and forlorn spirit, she sees him a few moments after, careering “au grand galop” with his arm round Miss Meredyth’s supple waist. Always that Miss Meredyth!

She feels wickedly vindictive against this girl—almost ghoulish, as though she would willingly scrunch her up, bones and all—this dollish beauty who has lured away her lover.

Zai grinds her to powder (mentally), under her high military heel, and turning to one of her adorers, asks for a pencil and deliberately writes down Lord Delaval’s name for the dance she has reserved for Carl.

It is some time, however, before this tardy reparation becomes known. Lord Delaval feels that he has borne as much as aristocratic flesh and blood can stand from this girl, who seems so little aware of the magnificent distinction he has conferred upon her, and that it is full time to assert his dignity.

He asserts it therefore in the ordinary fashion of men who are Épris—by bestowing his attention upon other women, of whom there are a multitude willing—and Gabrielle in particular—to accept everything or anything he chooses to offer, this Prince of Beauty, with his blond hair and ultramarine eyes.

Like so many poor boxes, they are ready to receive the smallest donation—a smile—a word—his arm for a promenade—or his hand for a dance. 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 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.

Having “put down his foot” on this point, he feels that all flirtations with Carlton Conway, Rayne and all others must end, that he must clearly make it understood that such doings must stop.

Flirt though he has been himself ever since he dropped round jackets and donned the toga virilis, and flirt though he probably intends to remain until the very end of the chapter, he has not the slightest idea of allowing his wife to indulge in the same amusement.

No! no! no! a thousand times no!

The woman of his choice must be an exceptional being, and a very different stamp of woman to the puppets of the Belgravian salons, with whom he has been in the habit of dallying and associating, and with whom he has passed so many hours of agreeable foolery.

CÆsar himself may of course do what he likes, but we all know what is expected from CÆsar’s wife.

It is an old, old story—carried down from generation to generation, and alas! for the honour of Society, a story infinitely more theoretical than practical.

The hours go on towards midnight—the crowd is suffocating, the heat intense, the gaiety at its height.

Since they entered the room, all the Beranger girls have been dancing, they are not the sort to personate wallflowers, none of them, and Zai in particular has not been five minutes under her mother’s ample wing.

Instead of looking worn out, however, she seems in higher beauty and gayer spirits then usual, when Lord Delaval again approaches her.

“You are only just in time,” she says, meeting his vexed eyes with a little laugh which he would think the most delicious in the world if he had not heard it bestowed upon any number of the golden youths during the last hour. “I have put your name down for this very waltz, and I was reflecting a moment ago whether I should have to send Percy to look you up, or whether I should give it to the multitude who are begging for it!”

Zai says all this with an air of delightful coquetry which is perfectly foreign to her. Poor child, she is of course only playing a part to hide her misery and mortification about Carl, but she plays it extremely well, and the coquettishness is remarkably becoming to her.

“I wonder you hesitated over the alternative, when there are so many to whom you could give the dance with satisfaction, no doubt, to both sides;” he answers a little sulkily.

“Yes! there are a good many,” Zai admits with ingenuous frankness. “But, then, you see, I thought you really wanted it! If you don’t—— ”

“You know I do!” he cries, quite unable to resist the pure, soft, sweet face uplifted to him.

All his mighty vexation is scattered to the four winds as he looks down on her.

In this world everything repeats itself.

Like the judges of old—whose fiat was stayed by fair Phryne’s face and form—so Zai’s pretty grey eyes, snowlidded and blacklashed, and her smile, even though it be forced, disperse this man’s anger in a trice.

As he speaks the band strikes up “Bitter Sweet,” and putting his arm around her elaborately whaleboned waist, yet a dainty lissom waist in spite of whalebone, he whirls her away.

It is a glorious waltz—the room is lengthy, the floor well waxed, the lights glitter, and the music peals out an exhilarating strain, and these two have danced often enough together to know well the other’s step and peculiarities.

It is also the end—though they don’t know it—of butterfly flirtation.

A very fitting end, too, for flirtations.

In the end of some serious love affairs, so much faith and hope go down for ever that we might well play over them that Marche FunÉbre of Chopin—that charming old Listz called the MÉlopÉe, so funereal, so full of desolating woe.

But for the end of flirtations, what can, we ask, be more appropriate than the light, gay, and entrancing strains of the Bitter Sweet Waltz?

“You must be awfully tired! You had better let me take you somewhere to rest!” Lord Delaval says, rather tenderly. Zai is tired, and does not demur; and he takes her out of the ball-room into a long corridor, in which the waxlights are a little dim, and in which fewer flirting couples than usual are to be seen.

Like a huge maelstrom, the salle de danse has engulphed them, so there is not much difficulty in finding the quiet and secluded corner, free from interruption, of which Lord Delaval is in search.

He wheels a cosy velvet-cushioned chair near an open window, and when she has dropped into it he settles himself opposite her on the window sill.

Zai shuts her eyes, it may be from physical fatigue, or it may be that she does not care to meet the keen searching gaze—anyway, a short silence follows, during which she slowly fans herself, and he—well—he is considering how to plunge at once into the subject nearest his heart—for he hates to wait for anything.

“I don’t care to talk about myself,” he says, after a minute or two. “If there is an abomination in the world, it is an egotistical man; but I should like to know if you have ever heard things about me which have caused you to shun my society at times? I know I have a number of kind friends in Town ready to tell you that I am a flirt, and worship myself only.”

“Yes,” she answers, truthfully. “I have certainly heard your friends say both things of you.”

“Perhaps in one thing they were right enough—I have flirted desperately in my life—every man who has never felt a strong exclusive attachment does flirt, you know, but never more! never more! I shall never flirt again—for—— ”

He bends forward until his face almost touches hers, and whispers low—

“The strong exclusive attachment has come to me!”

Zai does not answer, though she flushes in spite of herself.

“You cannot doubt that I love you, Zai!” he pleads, passionately, “and that I shall be the happiest man on earth if I can persuade you to marry me. Zai, do you think you will ever care for me enough to do that?”

He catches hold of her hands, and holds them as in a vice, and though she draws them away, she does not rebuke him for calling her “Zai.” Perhaps she scarcely heeds that he does so. 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. Zai has considered herself bound in honour to Carl; but he himself, by his conduct in the latter days, has given her back the freedom she did not want. There is really nothing to prevent her accepting Lord Delaval except—and that is a great deal—her own wilful rebellious soul, that clings to Carl with a tenacity stronger than herself.

“You will not press me, Lord Delaval! for an answer, will you?” she asks, quietly. “I should like to think a little, to reflect. One can’t make up one’s mind in a minute you know,” she winds up more hastily.

“On condition that you won’t keep me too long in suspense. Will you let me know my fate at the State Ball on Friday? That is two whole days.”

“Yes,” she answers, gravely; then she jumps up from her chair.

“I have promised Percy Rayne, Number 24,” she says, examining her ivory tablets, “and I hear it beginning. 24. Le Premier Baiser. It is such a delicious air that I never miss it.”

He rises and offers his arm in silence.

“It was Rayne who suggested your fancy dress, I suppose? I know he is great at such things,” he says, a trifle sullenly.

“Yes; do you like it?”

“No!”

“No! How very rude of you, Lord Delaval! I thought you were the pink of politeness,” she replies, laughing.

“I don’t like it because I feel as if you belonged to me, and I don’t care for you to wear what any other man suggests.”

“But I don’t belong to you,” she blurts out, on the spur of the moment. “Your feelings make a great mistake if they tell you I do.”

“They tell me that you will belong to me, however,” he answers, in a masterful tone, and Zai feels a thrill pass through her—a thrill of fear almost. It is not the first time she has felt it when this man has had a possessive ring in his voice.

Five minutes afterwards she has thrown off the feeling, and is dancing away as if her heart was as light as her feet; but when the waltz is over, she leans back against the wall, and wishes that she was dead.

“If you have one dance left, Miss Beranger, will you give it to me?” says a voice beside her.

Zai starts, the colour flames into her face, her limbs tremble, and her heart beats so that she places her hand unconsciously on it as if to stay the throbs.

“Yes, I have a dance—this one,” she says hurriedly, almost incoherently, and unseen by her people or Lord Delaval, she passes through the swaying crowd on Carlton Conway’s arm.

“Come out of the room, Zai, we can’t talk here.”

Ah! how his voice seems to bring back life and hope and happiness to the love-sick girl. To think! to think! that after all Carl has not thrown her over—that she has been doubting him, doing him injustice all this time.

And as they reach the same corridor in which Lord Delaval has just asked her to be his wife, but passing out of it enter a deserted balcony, the moonbeams fall on her face uplifted to her lover’s.

“Once more,” Carl murmurs with genuine feeling. “Oh, my love, my own—own love! I have wearied for this!”

And clasping her in his arms, he kisses her—kisses her with the old, old passion—on her sweet lips, that smile and quiver with bliss at his touch.

“It was not true, Carl, what they told me?” she says very low, with her eyes so wistful and one white arm round his neck.

“What did they tell you, Zai?” he asks brokenly. For fickle and light of nature—he cannot look on these sweet wistful eyes—he cannot feel the clinging clasp of this white arm unnerved.

“They told me you were going to marry—Miss Meredyth, Carl.”

Her heart throbs so fast he can hear it, but though he knows suspense is a terrible thing, for a few moments Carlton Conway gives no answer.