'Do you care about staying for the end?' asked Mr. Smithson of Lesbia. 'It will make us rather late at the Orleans.'
'Never mind how late we are,' said Lesbia, imperiously. 'I have always been cheated out of this last act for some stupid party. Imagine losing Gounod and Nillson for the sake of struggling through the mob on a stifling staircase, and being elbowed by inane young men, with gardenias in their coats.'
Lady Lesbia had a pretty little way of always opposing any suggestion of her sweetheart. She was resolved to treat him as badly as a future husband could be treated. In consenting to marry him she had done him a favour which was a great deal more than such a person had any right to expect.
She leant forward to watch and listen, with her elbow resting on the velvet cushion—her head upon her hand, and she seemed absorbed in the scene. But this was mere outward seeming. All the enchantment of music and acting was over. She only heard and saw vaguely, as if it were a shadowy scene enacted ever so far away. Every now and then her eyes glanced involuntarily toward Don Gomez, who stood leaning against the back of the box, pale, languid, graceful, poetic, an altogether different type of manhood from that with which she had of late been satiated.
Those deep dark eyes of his had a dreamy look. They gazed across the dazzling house, into space, above Lady Lesbia's head. They seemed to see nothing; and they certainly were not looking at her.
Don Gomez was the first man she ever remembered to have been presented to her who did not favour her with a good deal of hard staring, more or less discreetly managed, during the first ten minutes of their acquaintance. On him her beauty fell flat. He evidently failed to recognise her supreme loveliness. It might be that she was the wrong type for Cuba. Every nation has its own Venus; and that far away spot beyond the torrid zone might have a somewhat barbarous idea of beauty. At any rate, Don Gomez was apparently unimpressed. And yet Lesbia flattered herself that she was looking her best to-night, and that her costume was a success. She wore a white satin gown, short in the skirt, for the luxury of freedom in waltzing, and made with Quaker-like simplicity, the bodice high to the throat, fitting her like a sheath.
Her only ornaments were a garland of scarlet poppies wreathed from throat to shoulder, and a large diamond heart which Mr. Smithson had lately given her; 'a bullock's heart,' as Lady Kirkbank called it.
When the curtain fell, and not till then, she rose and allowed herself to be clad in a brown velvet Newmarket, which completely covered her short satin gown. She had a little brown velvet toque to match the Newmarket, and thus attired she would be able to take her seat on the drag which was waiting on the quietest side of Covent Garden.
'Why should not you go with us, Don Gomez?' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, in a gush of hospitality. 'The drive will be charming—not equal to your tropical Cuba—but intensely nice. And the gardens will be something too sweet on such a night as this. I knew them when the dear Duc d'Aumale was there. Ay de mi, such a man!'
Lady Kirkbank sighed, with the air of having known his Altésse Royale intimately.