"The viper! the ingrate! the thing made of iron! Oh, if it were her! if it were her! I would trample her through the floor! Where did she get the money? He had nothing—she had nothing. I thought I had chained them to me by their poverty; then I came home, so exhilarated by this great offer from the manager—and she is gone! So beautiful! and such a voice! Gone! gone! Oh, what a loss!"
Here Olympia, who had never known what self-control was, flung herself on a low, silken couch, heaped with cushions, like a divan, and began to pound them with her little fists, and spurn them with the soiled white satin slippers, in which she had been to rehearsal. This burst of hysterical fury would have brought down the house had she plunged into such naturalness on the stage. But she started up, and after snatching a mosaic card-receiver from her footman, and dashing it against a marble statuette of Venus coming from the bath, thus demolishing what little drapery the poor thing was trying to make the most of, came partially to herself and demanded what the fellow wanted.
The footman, shivering under his blue and silver, pointed to a card which lay on the carpet.
"Why don't you pick it up?" cried Olympia, stamping her satin slipper into a cluster of roses, that seemed to disappear from the carpet.
The man took up the card and handed it to her, with a reverence so humble that she longed to trample him down with the mock roses, and get him out of her sight; but, as he towered above her a foot or two, the process seemed difficult, so she ordered him out of the room, and looked at the card.
"Lord Hilton! Dear me!"
Olympia made a dash through the silken curtains, ran into the hall, just as Lord Hilton was leaving the door-step, and called him back.
He followed her into the boudoir, telling her the reason of his visit as he went.
This inflamed her anew, and she turned upon him savagely, but with some attempt at self-restraint.
"You wished to see Caroline? the ingrate! the viper! the raven with a nightingale's voice! You wish to see her? Why? This is singular. I thought she was a stranger to you. No! Then, where did you meet?"