She had been in a little awe of her new guest; but now her real nature broke out. Her wit sparkled like the champagne with which her red lips were continually moist; her eyes shone under the droop of those long white lids. She grew confidential with the young noble, and was easily led by the cool, versatile man, into conversation that she would have stubbornly avoided earlier in the evening. In one of her bold snatches of song she rounded off with a rollicking impromptu, which carried all the richness and force of her voice with it. This threw the whole company into a tumult of applause, but Hilton sat quietly and looked on, with a smile of supreme contempt quivering about his lips.
"Ha," said Olympia, filling his glass with her own hands, "you neither drink nor care for my singing. It is only the youth and beauty of my daughter that can move Lord Hilton."
Her daughter! The face of the young man turned white, and his lips closed sharply. He looked at the woman by his side, the flushed cheeks, the soft, slumbrous eyes, with absolute repulsion. He hated the very thought that the young creature he had found, like a bird, in that sweet Italian home, could belong in anything to a woman like that. Still, she had, in her reckless inadvertency, called her daughter, and though the very idea drove the blood to his heart, it was only by a cold pallor that the shock this one word had given to him was visible.
"Your daughter is very beautiful," he said, in a low voice.
"Did I call Caroline my daughter? Oh, well, it is no matter—the truth will out sometime, though I would rather wait till her success is assured. When she becomes famous, I shall glory in claiming her; but let me warn you, it is a secret as yet. You will understand. One does not care to own a girl as tall as that while the gloss is on one's hair. Nothing but the most wonderful success will induce me to acknowledge her before the world."
"But if she is your child—"
"I have said that she is my child; but it is a secret, and I did not mean to talk about it. Tell me, now, did you discover no likeness?"
"I did not observe."
"Still, they think her so beautiful."
Lord Hilton made no answer. The conversation had become irksome to him; but some person at the table took the last word from Olympia's lips and repeated it aloud.