'Not a very distinguished audience, is it, Delicia?' he said. He had called her Delicia from childhood, and he did not care, at the age of sixty-five, to break himself of the pleasant habit.
'No,' she replied, with a faint smile; 'I have never been here before. Have you?'
'Oh, yes, often; and so has my wife. The great advantage of music-halls like these is that one can come and be entertained at any moment of the evening without being forced to devour one's dinner with the lightning speed of a Yankee tourist. The mistake made by all theatre managers is the earliness of the hour they appoint for the rising of the curtain. Eight o'clock! Good heavens!—that's the usual London dinner time; and if one wants to get to the theatre punctually one must dine at six-thirty, which is ridiculous. Plays ought to commence at half-past nine and finish at half-past eleven; especially during the season. No man who loves his home comfort cares to gallop through the pleasantest meal of the day, and rush off to a theatre at eight o'clock; it's hard work, and is seldom rewarded by any real pleasure. The "Empire" and other places of the same character get on so very well, partly because they leave us a certain choice of hours. La Marina, you see, doesn't come on till ten.'
'She is very beautiful, isn't she?' asked Delicia.
'Oh, my dear!' said Mrs Cavendish, laughing a little, 'Beautiful is rather a strong expression! She's a—well—! What would you call her, Robert?' appealing to her husband.
'I should call her a fine, fleshy woman,' answered Mr Cavendish; 'Coarsely built, certainly; and I should say she drank a good deal. She'll get on all right enough while she's young; but at middle-age she'll be an appalling spectacle in the way of fat!'
He laughed, but Delicia scarcely heard his last words. She was lost in a wondering reverie. She could have easily understood a low-minded man becoming enamoured of an equally low-minded woman, but what puzzled her was to realise that her handsome and proudly-aristocratic husband should find anything attractive in a person who was 'coarse' and 'drank a good deal.' But now the musical prelude to the wonderful 'Birth of a Butterfly' began, and the low shivering of the violins responded to the melodious complaints of the deeper-toned 'cellos, as the lights of the 'Empire' were darkened, and over the crowded audience the kindly veil of a semi-obscurity fell, hiding the play of mean and coarse emotions on many a degraded face, and completely shadowing the wicked devilry of eyes so bereft of honesty, that had hell itself needed fresh sparks to kindle flame, those ugly human glances might have served the purpose. The curtain rose, displaying an exquisitely-painted scene called the 'Garden of Aurora,' where, in the rosy radiance of a deftly-simulated 'dawn of day,' the green trees trembled to the murmur of the subdued orchestral music, and roses—admirable creations of calico and gauze—hung from the wings in gay clusters, looking almost as if they were real. In the middle of the stage, on a broad green leaf that glittered with a thousand sparkles of imitation dew, lay a large golden cocoon, perfect in shape and shining gloriously in the beams of the mimic sun, to this central object the gaze of everyone in the audience was drawn and fixed. The music now grew wilder and sharper, the violins began to scream, the 'cellos to swear, and Sound itself, torn into shreds of impatient vibration, was beginning to protest discordantly at the whole representation, when lo!—the golden cocoon grew slowly more and more transparent, as if some invisible hand were winding off the silken treasure of the spinning, and the white form of a woman was dimly, delicately seen through the half-opaque covering. Loud murmurs of applause began, which swelled into a rapturous roar of ecstasy as with a sudden, sharp noise, which was echoed and repeated in the orchestra, the cocoon split asunder, and La Marina bounded forward to the footlights. Clad in diaphanous drapery, which scarcely concealed her form, and spreading forth two white butterfly wings, illumined in some mysterious way by electricity, she commenced her gliding dance—an intricate whirl of wonderful sinuous movements, every one of which might have served as a study for a sculptor. Her feet moved flyingly without sound; her face, artistically tinted for stage-effect, was beautiful; her hair of reddish-brown, lit weirdly by concealed electric dewdrops, flowed about her in a cloud that resembled a smouldering fire; and as she danced, she smiled as sweetly and with as perfect an imitation of childlike innocence as though she had in very truth been newly born in fairyland that night, just as she seemed,—a creature of light, love and mirth, with no idea at all of the brandy awaiting her by her own order in her dressing-room off the 'wings.' And Delicia, frozen into a kind of unnatural calm, watched her steadily, coldly, critically; and watching, realised that the Bond Street jeweller had not spoken without knowledge, for there, on Marina's panting bosom, gleamed the diamond dove carrying the golden love-token, which said, 'Je t'adore ma mie!' Flashing brilliantly with every toss and whirl of the dancer's pliant body, it was to Delicia the proof-positive of her husband's dishonour. And yet she found it difficult to grasp the truth at once; she was not aware of any particular emotion of hurt, or rage, or grief; she only felt very cold and sick, and she could not put so strong a control on herself as to quite hide these physical sensations altogether, for Mrs Cavendish, glancing at her in alarm, exclaimed,—
'Delicia, you are not well! Robert, she's going to faint; take her out of the box! Give her some air!'
Delicia forced herself to smile—to speak.
'It is nothing, I assure you,' she said, 'nothing but the heat and the smoke. Pray do not mind me; it will soon pass.'