It was not until the tumultuous ovation over the first act had ceased that Diana's presence was noticed by the audience. Accompanied by her father, she had arrived at the close of the overture, and had only time to slip into her place before the curtain arose. The walk in the rain had given her delicate skin a touch of color and heightened the beauty of her tender eyes, "so deeply blue that they were black," as Lord Patrick Illington described them on his first meeting at her presentation at Court. Her bands of straight hair were wound around her head; pale-green draperies encircled her lithesome body, and the gardenia blossoms in her hair gave her a fleeting likeness to the water-sprite Undine. In the horseshoe of fashionable mondaines the fragrance of her beauty was like that of a dew-sprayed rose.
Mrs. Hobart Chichester Chichester Jones, with her usual common-sense of seeing things as they were, leaned towards the man beside her.
"That is a beauty—the real thing; no chic, no gowning, no Paris wisdom of make-up, but a beauty. I'm glad I've seen it." She sank back as though philosophically preparing for a Waterloo.
From his box the Prince noticed the daughter of Sir Charles Marjoribanks whose services in diplomacy in his youth were not forgotten. Forthwith an equerry was sent to Sir Charles and Diana inviting them to visit the royal presence.
Diana was the social novelty of the season. The Prime-Minister remembered his classics as he dreamily gazed at her and murmured, "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?"
From the back of the box, Henry watched Diana's impression on the house. His eyebrows were drawn into horns of suppressed temper and there was an air of brutal determination in his bearing. Gradually his expression cleared. Diana's beauty that night stirred the best in him. He tried to dismiss the events of the afternoon; he would be worthy of this child-woman. He set his shoulders square as though preparing to fight unseen forces.
"Lucky fellow, Kerhill," one man confided to another as they watched the crowd's sweeping glasses pause constantly at Diana Marjoribanks's box and saw the triumphant look on Henry's face.
The sinuous, commanding Carmen had reached her triumphant entry with the toreador when the mad Don José's dagger drew the purple stain on the gold-embroidered gown. Over the house a spell-bound silence reigned. As from an animal wounded to the death, low sounds of agonized pain came from the great actress—she forgot to sing, and the house forgot that she was a singer in an opera comique. For the moment it faced the realistic truth of a grim tragedy.
Excited and intoxicated by the sensuous music, Diana was hardly conscious that the opera was over. She was like a child with the world for a great, colored balloon. As she came down the winding staircase she was almost happy, and turned to smile at Henry, who was by her side. As she did so she saw him frown. They reached the foot of the staircase, and found their way half-barred by a dark, foreign-looking woman robed in a spun-gold gown. Diana noticed the insolent, amused expression on her handsome face, but at that moment her attention was diverted by some one who spoke to her, and she only vaguely noticed Henry's constrained bow, and the sudden brutal flame in his eyes.
Only later, as she sleepily looked over at the park in the dim light, did she remember that the woman in cloth of gold at the bottom of the staircase was strangely like the vivid, foreign-looking woman who had flashed past her in the park as the storm broke.