“You came in very late last night, darling,” Zai says, a little reproachfully, as she sits en peignoir—but a peignoir daintily got up, with Valenciennes and pink ribbons, and looks divinely fair at the head of the breakfast-table.

“There was a carriage accident on the Boulevard, and I helped the occupants to get out,” he answers.

It is the first falsehood he has uttered to his wife, and in spite of him a tinge of red sweeps across his fair skin, to hide which he buries his face in his coffee-cup.

“Were the occupants ladies?” Zai asks, with a sensation of incipient jealousy.

She has learned to think this husband of hers so superbly handsome and irresistible that she believes all other women must consider him so likewise.

“Yes, ladies—old ladies, going home from some concert. They were terribly frightened, poor old girls,” he says, coolly.

“And how did you amuse yourself, darling?—and did you talk to anyone?”

“Why, you’ve grown into the Grand Inquisitor, my pet! I went to the theatre and I talked to Shropshire and Silverlake.”

“Those men!” she says with a little moue. “They are dreadfully fast, are they not, Delaval?”

“So so!”

“Were Lady Shropshire and Lady Silverlake there?”

“Oh, no!—the husbands are doing Paris en garÇon.”

“How very horrid!” she decides. “You wouldn’t care to go about en garÇon, would you, my own?”

“Certainly not,” he answers fervently.

But he has made up his mind to go out en garÇon all the same.

“And how’s baby?” he inquires unctuously, in the hope of turning the subject.

“He’s very well. I am sure he has grown half-an-inch in the last few days, and I really think he tried to say ‘pa—pa’ this morning, Delaval!”

“Did he really! Dear little chap!”

“Yes! and Madame Le Blanc tells me that she has been a monthly-nurse for thirty years, and that its the first time she has ever heard a child of two months-and-a-half pronounce so plainly!”

“Why the little chap must be the infant prodigy! Pity he’s so beastly red!”

“Red, Delaval! Why he’s exactly like Dresden China!” she replies, with intense mortification.

He gives a forced laugh. Then he pushes his plate away, with the devilled kidneys untouched, for he has no appetite. And leaning back in his chair, looks at his wife.

And he comes to the conclusion that he ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself.

There she is, facing him. Could any creature of mortal mould be sweeter, lovelier, purer, more adorable?

And yet!

These are two little words that carry more meaning in them than all the long, grandiose phrases in the Queen’s English. These two little words, indefinite as they seem, show exactly what a man’s mind is when it oscillates ’twixt right and wrong. Zai is undeniably charming, but she is not—la Blonde aux yeux noir!

She lacks the power to inflame the heart of the million. Her soft, dove-like eyes, cannot burn into men’s brains and souls like the dangerous but glorious black ones of Marguerite Ange!

“What piece did you see last night, Delaval?”

It is a poser. For one moment Lord Delaval, with the impatience and dislike of being catechised, which is natural to him, has a mind to speak the truth, and tell his wife that this morning he is not up to small talk. But he thinks better of it, and is equal to the occasion.

“A piece called La Tentation, darling! A thing in which there was a lot of love-making and smiling and bowing, and a woman, supposed to be an angel—but probably she is a devil,” he adds, almost sotto voce.

“Was she pretty?”

“Tol lol! You can’t tell what an actress is like on the stage, you know!”

“I hope you won’t find out what she is like off the stage!” Zai says earnestly. “Actresses are such bad, dangerous women, sometimes!”

“And how about actors?”

The shot goes home, for she flinches and flushes a little, and he is rather sorry he has said this. It was snobbish, perhaps! But when a man wishes to stop his wife’s mouth, he must do it the best way he can. Zai will not pursue the subject of Theatres and Thespians after his cut, he thinks. But he is wrong. She flushed more from a wounded feeling at his manner and tone than from the reference to her old lover, for whom she has the most profound indifference now.

“Have you heard anything about Trixy, Delaval?” she asks, in a low, humble voice. She is very much ashamed of this sister of hers, and scarcely likes mentioning her name before the man she not only loves but honours.

“Yes. Stubbs has got a divorce. Poor old chap! It appears that he was awfully cut up; had a fit, and nearly died. He wanted her to go back to him, and promised never to breathe a word of recrimination; but when he found she wouldn’t, he got a divorce, and gave that scoundrel Conway a bill at six months for ten thousand pounds provided he married her! Of course, the money was too much for the fellow; so the marriage will come off by-and-by.”

“And where is Trixy now?”

“Living at Hammersmith; dining at Richmond and the Orleans with all the fast men; dressing to the nine, and making herself the talk of town. She has quite forgotten the word more familiar to her youth than her Bible—convenances; but what can be expected? If a girl is innately bad, no power on earth can keep her straight.”

“But Trixy was not innately bad,” Zai murmurs, deprecatingly. “She married a man she could not love, and then—she yielded to——”

“The fascinations of Mr. Conway! Joy go with her! Men are not fair judges of their own sex, but if I was a woman, I should prefer old Stubbs to a dozen Conways!”

“And so should I—now,” Zai confesses meekly. “What a pity women have not the gift of clair-voyance!”

“Thank God, they haven’t!” he says to himself, as he rises, and walking up to the mirror on the mantel, looks at himself. “I wonder what Mademoiselle Ange saw in me to make her faint? It could not have been my ugliness!” he thinks, as the glass reflects back his handsome face—a face which he knows to be handsome and irresistible to most women.

Then he turns away carelessly—for he is not a vain man—and going up to his wife kisses her on her forehead.

But Zai is not satisfied with this.

“Won’t you kiss me properly, darling?” she says, holding up her fresh, red lips.

And her darling kisses her “properly,” though all the while he is wronging her in his heart, on the principle that sins of omission are as bad as sins of commission!