Walking with the infant cradled on her bosom, she passed twice across the stage, then paused beneath the box, and murmured:
"Papa's baby—Papa's own precious baby!" and her splendid eyes humid with tears looked full, straight into those of her husband.
It was the first time they had met during the evening, and something she saw in that quivering face made her heart ache with the old numbing agony. Cuthbert could scarcely restrain himself from leaping down upon the stage and clasping her in his arms; but she moved away, and the sorely smitten husband bowed his face in his hand, luckily shielded from public view by the position in which he sat.
The dinner scene ensued, and the abrupt announcement of the second marriage. The anguish and despair of the repudiated wife were portrayed with a vividness, a marvellous eloquence and passionate fervour that surpassed all former exhibitions of her genius, and the people rose, and applauded, as audiences sometimes do, when the magnetic wave rolls from the heart and brain on the stage to those of the men and women who watch and listen completely en rapport.
The life of the actress began, the struggle to provide for her child, the constant care to elude discovery, the application for legal advice, the statement of her helplessness, the attempt to secure the license; all were represented, and at last the meeting with her husband in the theatre.
Gradually the pathos melted away, she was the stern relentless outraged wife, intent only upon revenge. She spared not even the interview in which the faithless husband sought her presence; and as Cuthbert watched her, repeating the sentences that had so galled his pride, he asked himself how he had failed to recognize his own wife?
In the meeting with the child of the second marriage, her wild exultation, her impassioned invocation of Nemesis, was one of the most effective passages in the drama; and it caused a shiver to creep like a serpent over the body of the father, who pitied so tenderly the afflicted Maud.
As the scheme of saying her own daughter, by sacrificing herself in a nominal marriage with the man whom she hated and loathed so intensely, developed itself, a perceptible chill fell upon the audience; the unnaturalness of the crime asserted itself.
While she rendered almost literally the interviews at Pozzuoli and at Naples, Cuthbert glanced at his father, and saw a purplish flush steal from neck to forehead, but the old man's eyes never quitted the floor. He seemed incapable of moving, Gorgonized by the beautiful Medusa whose invectives against him were scathing, terrible.
As the play approached its close and the preparation for the marriage, even the details of the settlement were narrated, suspense reached its acme. Then came the letters of reprieve, the deliverance from the bondage of Peterson's vindictive malice, the power of establishing her claim; and when she wept her thanksgiving for salvation, many wept in sympathy; while Regina, borne away in breathless admiration of her mother's wonderful genius, sobbed unrestrainedly.