The next evening, or rather in the early hours of another day, four people were seated around the hospitable board of Kathleen Weir. One of these was the actress herself, her eyes bright with joy, her cheeks flushed with excitement, for the new play had been a great success, and the character of the heroine—passionate, loving, and impulsive—had suited her, and had won genuine applause from a crowded house. And her three guests consisted of Ralph Webster, another actress, and her present lover.
This other actress was of a very different type to Kathleen Weir. If she had not been beautiful she would have been nowhere on the stage. But she was beautiful; a sleepy, languid beauty, with a skin of snow, and shadowed dreamy eyes whose power she knew. And seated near her at the round supper table was young Lord Dereham, with his eyes fixed eagerly on her face.
Lord Dereham—the Earl of Dereham—had only very lately come into his great possessions. He was rather good-looking, with an honest, open expression, and the fair woman by his side had made up her mind, in her cold-hearted, calculating way, that she would become his wife. She was not in the least in love with him, but she wished to be a countess, and have nothing to do but amuse herself, and she was doing her best to obtain these luxuries.
Her name was Linda Falconer—the lovely Falconer the men called her—and her intended quarry at the present moment was Robert, Lord Dereham. Kathleen Weir had invited these two with a motive. She knew Linda Falconer would devote herself to Dereham, and that thus without being alone with Ralph Webster, that she would virtually be so.
They had laughed and jested about the new play; Kathleen, in her quick way and with her strong sense of humor, had brightly related little incidents that had occurred during the evening. She was not afraid of Linda Falconer’s white skin and dreamy eyes; she knew Linda had no wit, and that her beauty was all she had to depend on. Kathleen, on the other hand, had many resources. She was handsome, or seemed so; she was clever, and somehow she fancied that Ralph Webster was not a man who cared only for charms that were skin deep.
Suddenly she sprang to her feet in her lithe way.
“As all you good people seem to have finished supper,” she said, “suppose we go into the other room and I will sing you a song.”
Ralph Webster at once rose.
“I am too weary to move,” said Linda Falconer, with a languid glance at Lord Dereham.