“I do!” he answered slowly—“In more ways than one!” A faint smile was on his face, and his eyes brightened with that curious jewel-like gleam I had noticed several times before. “Believe me, I shall never contest with you such a slight gift as woman’s love, Geoffrey. It is not worth fighting for. And apropos of women, that reminds me,—I have promised to take you to the Earl of Elton’s box at the Haymarket to-night,—he is a poor peer, very gouty and somewhat heavily flavoured with port-wine, but his daughter, Lady Sibyl, is one of the belles of England. She was presented last season and created quite a furore. Will you come?”
“I am quite at your disposition”—I said, glad of any excuse to escape the dullness of my own company and to be in that of Lucio, whose talk, even if its satire galled me occasionally, always fascinated my mind and remained in my memory—“What time shall we meet?”
“Go and dress now, and join me at dinner,”—he answered; [p 82] “And we’ll drive together to the theatre afterwards. The play is on the usual theme which has lately become popular with stage-managers,—the glorification of a ‘fallen’ lady, and the exhibition of her as an example of something superlatively pure and good, to the astonished eyes of the innocent. As a play it is not worth seeing,—but perhaps Lady Sibyl is.”
He smiled again as he stood facing me,—the light flames of the fire had died down to a dull uniform coppery red,—we were almost in darkness, and I pressed the small button near the mantelpiece that flooded the room with electric light. His extraordinary beauty then struck me afresh as something altogether singular and half unearthly.
“Don’t you find that people look at you very often as you pass, Lucio?” I asked him suddenly and impulsively.
He laughed. “Not at all. Why should they? Every man is so intent on his own aims, and thinks so much of his own personality that he would scarcely forget his ego if the very devil himself were behind him. Women look at me sometimes, with the affected coy and kitten-like interest usually exhibited by the frail sex for a personable man.”
“I cannot blame them!” I answered, my gaze still resting on his stately figure and fine head with as much admiration as I might have felt for a noble picture or statue—“What of this Lady Sibyl we are to meet to-night,—how does she regard you?”
“Lady Sibyl has never seen me,”—he replied—“And I have only seen her at a distance. It is chiefly for the purpose of an introduction to her that the Earl has asked us to his box this evening.”
“Ha ha! Matrimony in view!” I exclaimed jestingly.
“Yes—I believe Lady Sibyl is for sale,”—he answered with the callous coldness that occasionally distinguished him and made his handsome features look like an impenetrable mask of scorn—“But up to the present the bids have not been sufficiently high. And I shall not purchase. I have told you already, Tempest, I hate women.”