“There’ll be no getting back through the crowd. Please let me stay till she has sung.”
“As you please.”
He turned and left her, offended that she should refuse him; vexed at her desire to hear the woman who had already been a bone of contention between them. He went back to the inner drawing-room, as far as possible from the piano and the clever German pianist who had arranged the programme for Lady Hartley, and who was to accompany—somewhat reluctantly—the lady from the Apollo, whose performance might pass the boundary line of the comme il faut, he thought.
Vansittart stood where he could just see Lisa, by looking over the heads of the crowd. She took her stand a little way from the piano, with admirable aplomb, though this was her first society performance. She was in yellow—a yellow crape gown, very simply made, with a baby bodice and short puffed sleeves; and on the clear olive of her finely moulded neck there flashed the collet necklace which represented the firstfruits of her success. Vansittart shuddered as he noted the jewels, for he had the accepted idea of actress’s diamonds, and he began to fear that Lisa had already taken the wrong road.
She sang a ballad from the new serio-comic opera, Haroun Alraschid, a ballad which all the street organs and all the smart bands were playing, and which was as familiar in the remotest slums of the east as in the gardens of the west.
“I am not fair, I am not wise,
But I would die for thee;
My only merit in thine eyes
Is my fidelity.
Oh, couldst thou kill me with thy frown,