“What object has Gabrielle? Why to make the best match in town. I don’t believe that girl would stickle at anything.”
Gabrielle’s propensities to go ahead in everything are not interesting to Baby, who has quite a multitude of _affaires du cœur_ of her own, so she agrees with her mother by a mournful shake of her curly head, and is speedily engrossed with a young German _attaché_, who, deluded by the apparent wealth of the host, thinks the youngest Honble. Miss Beranger will be a prize worth gaining.
Once more Lady Beranger breaks in on the preliminaries of this Anglo-Prussian alliance.
“Gone off to bed. She said she was ill, but I think she was angry because Carlton Conway forgot his dance.”
“Why did he forget his dance with her?” Lady Beranger mutters sternly, with hydra-headed suspicion gnawing her mind.
“Why?” Baby is a little at fault. She is rather _distraite_ after Count Von Niederwalluf’s last sweet nothing, and she has not an answer ready, so she speaks the truth once in a way:
“I think Carlton Conway was out on the balcony with Zai, mamma.”
“I wish you would not call him _Carlton_ Conway. How often have I told you that it is very bad form for girls to speak familiarly of men,” Lady Beranger rejoins in a harsh whisper, then she moves off, much to Baby’s satisfaction.
“Miladi looks angry,” Von Niederwalluf murmurs softly. “She does not frown because--_Ich liebe dich?_”
Baby has never been good at languages, or at anything, in fact, that her numerous governesses have toiled to cram into her pretty little head, but
She understands these three little words quite well. She has seen them in a little book called “Useful English and German Phrases for Tourists.”
“_Nein_,” she coos tenderly, “and if she was angry it would make no difference, for--_Ich liebe dich_--too--you know.”
Meanwhile the moon has grown fuller and rounder and yellower, and is right prodigal of its beams--and no wonder--for its tender glances, satiated as they must be with mortal beauty, have seldom fallen on a fairer thing than this girl who, Belgravian born and bred, has braved that autocrat of her class, the convenances, and with a long dark cloak thrown over her snowy ball-dress, and a large hat hiding the glory of her hair, has stolen out amidst the fresh cool foliage of the square, to talk to her lover.