LITMIR.BIZ

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no other girl ever had in the world. I loved you in that moment as much as I love you now, Carl! And that is – oh! how can I tell you? I don’t believe that was the beginning of my love, for it was so great, and full, and perfect, that it must have been growing a long, long time. I love you! – I love you! I could say it every hour of my life, until you tired of hearing me. But you will never, never tire of hearing me say it, Carl, will you?” she asks wistfully.

      Carlton Conway laughs as he listens, but it is scarcely a laugh that denotes mirth. Eight-and-twenty – he has never found a true woman yet to his thinking, until this one came and sat down in blind adoration at his feet, and gave all her pure and loving heart and soul into his keeping – unreservedly – unquestioningly – and brought a sense of happiness with her which he had never pictured even in his dreams.

      Tired of hearing that she loves him! When her love is the one thing in all the world to him. It is these words of hers that make him laugh. They seem so strange and absurd, when he knows that his whole being is full of her. So he answers her by wrapping his arms round her, and pressing fond, fervent kisses on her brow and lids and sweet tempting lips – the lips that are his, and that no other man has touched like this. He has culled their perfume and fragrance, and as he feels this to be true, each kiss that he gives and takes seems to be a link in the chain of love that binds them together.

      “When do your people leave town, Zai?” he asks her, “and for how long?”

      “The day after to-morrow, Carl,” she answers, stifling back a sob, for Hampshire seems to be the world’s end from London, “but we shall be back in a week.”

      “And who has Lady Beranger invited down to Sandilands?”

      “Mr. Hamilton and Lord Delaval.”

      Carlton Conway grinds his heel into the ground with impotent rage.

      “So,” he mutters, “both are eligible men. How well Lady Beranger knows what she’s about. I wonder for which of her lovely daughters she is trying to hook old Hamilton?”

      “For Trixy I think, Trixy always gets on with elderly men. I believe she is really in love with someone, and is therefore indifferent if her companions are old or young.”

      Carl Conway reddens. Of course everybody knows that Trixy Beranger, who used to be the biggest flirt in town when she came out two years ago, has sobered down strangely, and everybody puts down the change to the influence of Carl Conway.

      “And Delaval is asked for you,” he cries jealously.

      “Oh, Gabrielle will take care of him,” Zai laughs brightly. “Gabrielle is more fitted for a coronet than either of us. She is so tall and stately, and has so much of what mamma calls worldly guile.”

      “Which, thank God, you haven’t, my own Zai. I have got an invitation for the day after to-morrow to Elm Lodge.”

      “Ah!” she cries, with a happy smile, “that is only a mile from Sandilands.”

      “Yes, but you know Crystal Meredyth is rather fond of me, and Mrs. Meredyth doesn’t object to followers, even if they are artists or actors.”

      Zai shivers from head to foot in the warm June night, and grows white to her quivering lips as she draws herself away gently from his clasp.

      “What is it, darling?” he asks anxiously.

      No answer.

      Zai’s head droops so that he cannot see her eyes, so he puts his hand under her chin and lifts up her face, and as he gazes down at it he thinks that God never made so beautiful a thing as she who has been made for him. The red lips quiver, her sweet eyes tell him such a wondrous tale of love, that he forgets everything but himself and her.

      How he longs to carry her away in his stalwart arms. His darling, his little sweetheart!

      “Come, Zai, my own, own Zai! Speak to me, tell me once more that you love me, that no one will ever make you forget me. It drives me wild to think that those fellows at Sandilands will be near you, and I away.”

      “You will have – Crystal Meredyth!” she whispers tremulously, then she breaks into a passion of tears, each of which stab him to the heart.

      He kisses them off, and holds her to him fondly, and what with caresses and love words, draws the smiles back to her mouth, and the pink colour to her cheek.

      “Zai, will you swear to be as true to me as I shall be true to you?”

      “I swear,” she replies unhesitatingly.

      “And you won’t let those fellows, Delaval and Hamilton, dare to make love to you?”

      “I would rather die, Carl.”

      “I believe you would, my child,” he answers in a trustful voice, “and now let us say good-night here, though I am going back to the house to show myself.”

      “Good-night!”

      And, like Romeo and Juliet, they find parting is such sweet sorrow that it is some moments before it takes place.

      And when Zai leaves him, he murmurs to himself, truthfully, honestly:

      “My God, how I love her!”

      Ten minutes afterwards, he is valsing to the strain of “Love’s Dreamland” with Crystal Meredyth, and whispering low to her, and Crystal, who has set him up as a hero to worship, blushes and smiles with intense satisfaction.

      “What a flirt that Conway is,” Lady Beranger soliloquises, as she watches him covertly. “I do not believe he really presumes to think of Zai, but it won’t do to have him interfering with Delaval. What a charming couple they make,” she adds with intense satisfaction, as Zai floats by with Lord Delaval, but she does not mark how distraite her daughter looks, and that the good-looking peer’s soft nothings fall on stoney ground, and neither does she know that when the ball is over, Zai goes to bed and cries bitterly as she remembers that Crystal Meredyth is lovely and that men always like pretty women.

      CHAPTER II.

      SANDILANDS

      “Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,

      ’Tis woman’s whole existence.”

      It must be a rose-tinted existence. So outsiders fancy as they look at Sandilands from under the shadowy light and shade that falls across some mossy bank, but before they venture an opinion on the subject, let them pause. The judging of other folks’ lives by their external surroundings is the most deceptive work possible.

      Sandilands is a paradise, but, like the original Paradise, it has a serpent crawling over its flowers – nay, it has more than one.

      “Going down to Sandilands just for a breath of fresh air, you know, after the stuffiness of Town,” Lady Beranger imparts to the Dowager Marchioness of Damesbury.

      But the Dowager knows better. She knows that Lady Beranger delights in the stuffiness of Town, especially in the season, and that Sandilands is only a decoy duck for Lord Delaval.

      So she shakes her well-known curls solemnly at the fibber and says nothing, but thinks ever so much the more. She is an astute old aristocrat, old – Heaven knows how old – but as festive as a young thing of one score, and always to be found at country houses, as a sort of standing dish.

      They do say – they who say everything – that she never spends any of her own income, but is kept in board and lodging by the friends whom she honours by feeding at their expense.

      “We are only going down for a week, couldn’t we persuade you, dear Marchioness, to run down with us?”

      Yes. The Dowager accepts with pleasure. She is a bit of a wag. She has lived so long in the world that she has grown a little cynical and humorous over its fads and follies, and Lady Beranger amuses her immensely. It’s such fun to think that Lady Beranger believes she takes her in, when all the while she reads Lady B. through and through, and knows that she is only asked down to Sandilands for mamma to talk to, while her daughters catch the eligibles.

      The

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