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The Zu-Zu might rage, might sulk, might even swear all sorts of naughty Mabille oaths, most villainously pronounced, at the ascendancy of her haughty, unapproachable patrician rival she did do all these things but Bertie would not have been the consummate tactician, the perfect flirt, the skilled and steeled campaigner in the boudoirs that he was, if he had not been equal to the delicate task of managing both the peeress and the ballet-dancer with inimitable ability; even when they placed him in the seemingly difficult dilemma of meeting them both, with twenty yards between them, on the neutral ground of the gathering to see the Pytchley or the Tailby throw off a task he had achieved with victorious brilliance more than once already this season.
With which masterly description in one phrase of all he could have done for the ill-starred debutante who had been hungry in the wrong place, Cecil lounged out of the club to drive with half a dozen of his set to a water-party a Bacchanalian water-party, with the Zu-Zu and her sisters for the Naiads and the Household for their Tritons.
To an uninitiated mind it would have seemed marvelous and beautiful in its combination of simplicity and intricacy, to have noted the delicate tactics with which Bertie conducted himself between his two claimants bending to his Countess with a reverent devotion that assuaged whatever of incensed perception of her unacknowledged rival might be silently lurking in her proud heart; wheeling up to the pony-trap under cover of speaking to the men from Egerton Lodge, and restoring the Zu-Zu from sulkiness, by a propitiatory offer of a little gold sherry-flash, studded with turquoises, just ordered for her from Regent Street, which, however, she ungraciously contemned, because she thought it had only cost twenty guineas; anchoring the victimized Seraph beside her by an adroit "Ah! by the way, Rock, give Zu-Zu one of your rose-scented papelitos; she's been wild to smoke them"; and leaving the Zu-Zu content at securing a future Duke, was free to canter back and flirt on the offside of Vivandiere, till the "signal," the "cast," made with consummate craft, the waving of the white sterns among the brushwood, the tightening of girths, the throwing away of cigars, the challenge, the whimper, and the "stole away!" sent the field headlong down the course after as fine a long-legged greyhound fox as ever carried a brush.
The Zu-Zu turned Mother of Pearl back with a fiery French oath; she hated to be "cut down," but she liked still less to risk her neck; and two of the Household were already treated to "crackers" that disabled them for the day, while one Melton man was pitched head foremost into the brook, and another was sitting dolorously on the bank with his horse's head in his lap, and the poor brute's spine broken.
And Rake, rendered almost melancholy by his thoughts, went out of the box to get into saddle and ride off on an errand of his master's to the Zu-Zu at her tiny hunting-lodge, where the snow-white ponies made her stud, and where she gave enchanting little hunting-dinners, at which she sang equally enchanting little hunting-songs, and arrayed herself, in the Fontainebleau hunting costume, gold-hilted knife and all, and spent Cecil's winnings for him with a rapidity that threatened to leave very few of them for the London season.
"Beats cock-fighting!" cried the Zu-Zu, while her blue skirts fluttered in the wind, as she lifted Cecil's brown mare, very cleverly, over a bilberry hedge, and set her little white teeth with a will on the Seraph's attar-of-rose cigarette.
Away he went in a rattling spin, breaking straight at once for the open, the hounds on the scent like mad: with a tally-ho that thundered through the cloudless, crisp, cold, glittering noon, the field dashed off pell-mell; the violet habit of her ladyship, and the azure skirts of the Zu-Zu foremost of all in the rush through the spinneys while Cecil on the King, and the Seraph on a magnificent white weight-carrier, as thoroughbred and colossal as himself, led the way with them.
Nor did it at all interfere with the sincerity of his worship that the Zu-Zu was at the prettiest little box in the world, in the neighborhood of Market Harborough, which he had taken for her, and had been at the meet that day in her little toy trap, with its pair of snowy ponies and its bright blue liveries that drove so desperately through his finances, and had ridden his hunter Maraschino with immense dash and spirit for a young lady who had never done anything but pirouette till the last six months, and a total and headlong disregard of "purlers" very reckless in a white-skinned, bright-eyed, illiterate, avaricious little beauty, whose face was her fortune; and who most assuredly would have been adored no single moment longer, had she scarred her fair, tinted cheek with the blackthorn, or started as a heroine with a broken nose like Fielding's cherished Amelia.
"You drive a team, Beauty never drive a team," the Seraph had said on occasion, over a confidential "sherry-peg" in the mornings, meaning by the metaphor of a team Lady Guenevere, the Zu-Zu, and various other contemporaries in Bertie's affections.
Meanwhile, all the same, he murmured Mussetism to the Guenevere under the ruins of the Alte Schloss, lost or won a rouleau at the roulette-wheel, gave a banknote to the famous Isabel for a tea-rose, drove the Zu-Zu four in hand to see the Flat races, took his guinea tickets for the Concerts, dined with Princes, lounged arm-in-arm with Grand Dukes, gave an Emperor a hint as to the best cigars, and charmed a Monarch by unfolding the secret of the aroma of a Guards' Punch, sacred to the Household.
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