"As I said," Paddock ran on, "you'll enjoy Mrs. Bruce to-night. Her lines are good, but somehow—it's really a great problem to me—she doesn't sound human and natural when she gets them off. I looked up her beauty doctor and asked him if he couldn't put a witty gleam in her eye, but he told me he didn't care to go that far in correcting Mrs. Bruce's Maker."
They had reached the Villa Jasmine now, a great white palace in a flowery setting more like a dream than a reality. The evening breeze murmured whisperingly through the palms, a hundred gorgeous colors shone in the moonlight, fountains splashed coolly amid the greenery.
"Act Two," muttered Minot. "The grounds surrounding the castle of the fairy princess."
"You have to come down here, don't you," replied Paddock, "to realize that old Mother Nature has a little on Belasco, after all?"
The whir of a motor behind them caused the two young men to turn. Then Mr. Minot saw her coming up the path toward him—coming up that fantastic avenue of palms—tall, fair, white, a lovely figure in a lovely setting—
Ah, yes—Lord Harrowby! He walked at her side, nonchalant, distinguished, almost as tall as a popular illustrator thinks a man in evening clothes should be. Truly, they made a handsome couple. They were to wed. Mr. Minot himself had sworn they were to wed.
He kept the bitterness from his tone as he greeted them there amid the soft magic of the Florida night. Together they went inside. In the center of a magnificent hallway they found Mrs. Bruce standing, like stout Cortez on his Darien peak, triumphant amid the glory of her gold.
Mr. Minot thought Mrs. Bruce's manner of greeting somewhat harried and oppressed. Poor lady, every function was a first night for her. Would the glare of the footlights frighten her? Would she falter in her lines—forget them completely? Only her sisters of the stage could sympathize with her understandingly now.
"So you are to carry Cynthia away?" Minot heard her saying to Lord Harrowby. "Such a lot of my friends have married into the peerage. Indeed, I have sometimes thought you English have no other pastime save that of slipping engagement rings on hands across the sea."
A soft voice spoke in Minot's ear.