Mr. Tremain had not been present during this little passage at arms, but Miss James, as she sat before her mirror that evening "making-up" her small sallow face into a hard-visaged, calculating Mrs. Bouncer, congratulated herself upon her strategy.
"My shot told," she was thinking, as she painted in another wrinkle, "it almost took Miss Hildreth off her guard. She is not likely to forget herself again; but I have seen her once without her mask, and that is enough. Oh yes, 'it moves, it moves.'"
Then, with Galileo's immortal words on her lips, she added a final touch to her eyebrows, and glided quickly away, appearing a few moments later in the flies, and calling forth Mr. Robinson's encomiums upon her as a model of punctuality.
CHAPTER VIII.
A SOCIETY DRAMA.
In another half-hour the little playhouse was full to overflowing. Not a seat was vacant, and scarcely an inch of space was left for the men of the party to plant their feet upon. Gay and musical were the tones of women's voices and laughter that rose and fell upon the scented air, sustained and strengthened by the more manly bassos.
The theatre itself glowed in the soft effulgence of electric light, each filament incased in a hanging crystal vase, subdued to a warm palpitating softness by silk shades of roseate hue. Flowers bloomed everywhere, piled in glowing masses along the walls and across the miniature orchestra screen. The rose-houses had been stripped of their loveliest exotics, and these rifled blossoms hung their gorgeous heads amidst a quivering background of clinging green smilax.
On each rose-silk fauteuil lay a bouquet of the golden-hued Maréchal Niels, tied with long ribbons of palest amber, and a tiny satin programme on which, amidst quaint device of scroll work, were inscribed the characters and scenes of the coming drama.
The lever de rideau was a masterpiece from the hand of an English Academician, whose foreign name was better known in the two great English-speaking countries than others boasting a more national ring. The heavy folds of richest white silk bore testimony to the versatility of his brain and brush, since here swept garlands of trailing roses across a wonderful marble terrace, upon which were grouped in classic attitudes the sisters of histrionic art, Melpomene, Thalia, and Terpsichore.