“These fads! These fads!” exclaimed the young man addressed as Fletcher. “Have you resigned yourself to the New Woman, Bertie? The New York variety is innocuous. They just have a real good time and the newspapers take them seriously and write them up, which they think is lovely.”
“Nobody pays any attention to Fletcher Cuyler,” said Miss Creighton with affected disdain. “We will make you all stare yet.”
The Duke smiled absently. He was looking toward the box in the middle of the tier.
“I think women should have whatever diversion they can find or invent,” he said. “Society does not do much for them.”
The curtain rose.
“Keep quiet,” ordered Cuyler. “I allow no talking in a box which I honour with my presence. That isn’t what I ruin myself for.”
He was a tail nervous blonde bald-headed man of the Duke’s age, with an imp-like expression and dazzling teeth. Despite the fact that he was unwealthed, he was a fixed star in New York society; he not only knew more dukes and princes than any other man in the United States, but was intimate with them. He had smart English relatives and was a graduate of Oxford, where he had been the chosen friend of the heir to the Dukedom of Bosworth. His excessive liveliness, his adaptability and versatility, his audacity, eccentricities, cleverness, and his utter disregard of rank, had made him immensely popular in England. He was treated as something between a curio and a spoilt child; and if people guessed occasionally that his head was peculiarly level, they but approved him the more.
When the act was done and the box again invaded, Cuyler carried the Englishman off to call on Mrs. Forbes. Her box was already crowded, and Mr. Forbes stood just outside the door. As the Duke was introduced to him, he contracted his eyelids, and a brief glance of contempt shot from eyes that looked twenty years younger than the fish-like orbs which involuntarily twitched as they met that dart. But Mr. Forbes was always courteous, and he spoke pleasantly to the young man of his father, whom he had known.
Cuyler entered the box. “Get out,” he said, “everyone of you. I’ve got a live duke out there. He’s mortgaged for the rest of the evening and time’s short.” He drove the men out, then craned his long neck round the half-open door.
“Dukee, dukee,” he called, “come hither.”