He was weak of purpose; he never resolutely took himself in hand and said:
"I am married now. I have a wife at home. Leone's beauty, Leone's talents, are all less than nothing to me. I will be true to my wife."
He never said that; he never braced his will, or his energies to the task of forgetting her; he dallied with the temptation as he had done before; he allowed himself to be tempted as he had done before; the result was that he fell as he had fallen before.
Every day his first thought was how he could possibly get away that evening without drawing particular attention to his movements; and he went so often that people began to laugh and to tease him and to wonder why he was always there.
Leone always saw him. If any one had been shrewd and quick enough to follow her, they would have seen that she played to one person; that her eyes turned to him continually; that the gestures of her white arms seemed to woo him. She never smiled at him, but there were times, when she was singing some lingering, pathetic notes, it seemed as though she were almost waiting for him to answer her.
He did not dare to go behind the scenes, to linger near the door, to wait for her carriage, but his life was consumed with the one eager desire to see her. He went night after night to the box; he sat in the same place; he leaned his arms on the same spot, watching her with eyes that seemed to flash fire as they rested on her.
People remarked it at last, and began to wonder if it could be possible that Lord Chandos, with that beautiful wife, the queen of blondes, was beginning to care for La Vanira; he never missed one night of her acting, and he saw nothing but her when she was on the stage.
Again one evening Lady Chandos said to him:
"Lance, have you noticed how seldom you spend an evening—that is, the whole of an evening—with me? If you go to a ball with me, it seems to me that you are always absent for an hour or two."
"You have a vivid imagination, my dear wife," he replied.