“People said the same thing about Curly what’s-his-name.”
“Curly?”
“Yes, the Englishman who acted with the red-haired woman.”
“Oh, you mean Kyrle—”
“Curl! Is that how he calls himself? Well, I’m sure I’ve no objection. I liked him. But people went about saying he wasn’t natural.”
Bella looked up. “Did you think he was?”
“Certainly not. But I’m a person who likes acting. I don’t want them natural.” She wound up in a tone of delicious contempt, “I can see people being natural every day of my life, without paying for it.”
Bella laughed. “Oh, I’m so glad I know you, dear Mrs. Mar!” That lady, unmoved by the tribute, began to do her duty by the notes. Bella never listened to notes, and by and by her little face took on again the tragic look with which she had declaimed, “La fatalité s’accomplit.”
Bella was a good deal changed in this last year. Hildegarde, looking at her paling beauty, was sometimes stricken with fear. “What should I do without her!”
The postman’s ring. Bella jumped up without ceremony in the middle of Note 2, and ran out to see what had come. Only a paper. It wasn’t the postman. Merely the little boy outrageously late with “The Evening News.”