“Don’t look to the left. There is a box with Peter Hawkshaw in it, and Polly, and two girls—one of them the greatest beauty I ever saw, though but a slip of a girl. If Peter or Polly sees us, Lord help us!”
I did not look around immediately, but the desire to have a glimpse of the adorable Lady Arabella made me steal a glance that way. She was very beautifully dressed, and though but little more than sixteen, such a vision of loveliness as fairly to rival reigning beauties of several seasons’ standing. I own that I saw little Daphne sitting by Lady Arabella, but I noted her scarcely at all.
Nor could Giles keep his eyes off Lady Arabella; and I noticed that even when the divine Sylvia, as he called her, was on the stage, he was not strictly attentive to her, but rather sought that fateful box where so much beauty was enthroned.
The divine Sylvia was a delightful actress, I must admit, and in spite of being forty if she was a day, and though raddled with paint, she had something winning in her air and face, and I could understand her tremendous popularity with the young bloods.
Neither Sir Peter nor Polly, as Giles called her, showed any signs whatever of having recognized us in the large crowd in the pit, and we began to congratulate ourselves heartily. There was a seat next to us held by a gentleman’s servant, and presently he gave way to a remarkably handsome young man of six or seven and twenty.
A few words passed between master and man, and then we knew that the handsome gentleman was Captain Philip Overton, of the Second Life Guards. Giles exchanged significant looks with me.
Captain Overton seated himself quietly, and, after a careless glance at the house, seemed to retire into his own thoughts, quite unmindful of the stage and what was going on upon it. I wondered why a man who seemed so little in harmony with his surroundings should take the trouble to come to the play.
But if Captain Overton were indifferent to all about him, one person, the young beauty in Lady Hawkshaw’s box, was far from indifferent to him. Lady Arabella saw his entrance, and from that moment she was occupied in trying to obtain his attention. When at last he recognized her and bowed slightly, she flamed all over with color, and gave him as good an invitation as any man might want to come to her box. But Overton made no sign of any intention to go to her, and, when she finally seemed to realize this, she became as indifferent to all about her as he was. Other persons came to the box and went during the play, but they got little heed from Lady Arabella. Little Daphne, although but a child, not yet in her teens, showed a lively interest in all that passed and behaved in a most young-ladyish way, much to my diversion. (I was all of two years older than she.)
As the play progressed, I saw that Giles was becoming more and more infatuated with the fledgling beauty, and he even whispered to me a suggestion that we present ourselves boldly at the door of the box. This I received with horror, fearing both Sir Peter and Lady Hawkshaw. Indeed, I had not been able to shake off this fear of my great-uncle and aunt for a moment.
One’s first night at the play is usually a magic dream, but mine was tempered with the dread of being caught on the spot, of being delayed in our return to Portsmouth, and the torment of seeing the adored of my heart quite absorbed in another man.