"You'd never know, if you were in the audience, that it wasn't Gray herself. I can take her off to the life, and if the prompter'll stand by—"
He looked at me for a full minute.
"Try it, Olden," he said.
I did. I flew to Gray's dressing-room. She'd gone home deathly ill, of course. They gave me the best seamstress in the place. She let out the waist a bit and pulled over the lace to cover it. I got into that mass of silk and lace—oh, silk on silk, and Nance Olden inside! Beryl Blackburn did my hair, and Grace Weston put on my slippers. Topham, himself, hung me with those gorgeous shining diamonds and pearls and emeralds, till I felt like an idol loaded with booty. There were so many standing round me, rigging me up, that I didn't get a glimpse of the mirror till the second before Ginger called me. But in that second—in that second, Mag Monahan, I saw a fairy with blazing cheeks and shining eyes, with a diamond coronet in her brown hair, puffed high, and pearls on her bare neck and arms, and emeralds over the waist, and rubies and pearls on her fingers, and sprays of diamonds like frost on the lace of her skirt, and diamond buckles on her very slippers, and the rose diamond, like a sun, outshining all the rest; and—and, Mag, it was me!
How did it go? Well, wouldn't it make you think you were a Lady, sure enough, if you couldn't move without that lace train billowing after you; without being dazzled with diamond-shine; without a truly Lord tagging after you?
He kept his head, Lord Harold did—even if it is a mutton-head. That helped me at first. He was so cold, so stupid, so slow, so good-tempered—so just himself. And after the first plunge—
I tell you, Mag Monahan, there's one thing that's stronger than wine to a woman—it's being beautiful. Oh! And I was beautiful. I knew it before I got that quick hush, with the full applause after it. And because I was beautiful, I got saucy, and then calm, and then I caught Fred Obermuller's voice—he had taken the book from the prompter and stood there himself—and after that it was easy sailing.
He was there yet when the act was over, and I trailed out, followed by my Lord. He let the prompt-book fall from his hands and reached them both out to me.
I flirted my jeweled fan at him and swept him a courtesy.
Cool? No, I wasn't. Not a bit of it. He was daffy with the sight of me in all that glory, and I knew it.