The dark eyes did not dwell on men's faces. They looked down as if in mournful retrospection. The scarlet lips but seldom smiled. The cheeks were always pale.
One pair of eyes followed every movement of the prima donna with a passionate pain and repressed yearning in their grave, sad depths.
She did not turn to meet their glances, yet she knew instinctively that he was there. Through all the scenes in which she took her brilliant part there remained with her an aching consciousness of that note which Ronald Valchester held tightly clenched in his hand as he followed her every movement with hungry, despairing eyes—the note she had sent him that evening at twilight.
It was brief and calm, but Ronald had read it over and over. He had held the thick, satiny sheet in his hand, and looked at the delicate, flowing chirography with a blank, staring gaze, trying to picture to himself the white, jeweled hand that had traced those lines that seemed so cold and cruel to his eager, passionate, though wretched heart.
Yet Jaquelina had not meant to be so cruel. She had only written out of the tenderness of her pity for Violet, and the sadness of her own despair, these plaintive words:
"Dear Ronald:—For the sake of all that I might have been to you once, I beg you to listen to me and grant my prayer. I have learned to-day that you are deeply beloved by one whose unconscious rival I have been for years. Perhaps you may guess her name—it is Violet Earle. It will make her very happy if you will make her your wife. One more request, Ronald. I am compelled to remain in New York two weeks longer. I think I could bear it better, Ronald, if you would leave New York and return to the South until I am gone, you understand. The Earles return to-morrow. Go with them, Ronald; marry Violet, and try to be happy. For me, I will leave America as soon as my engagement is ended, and henceforth the whole width of the world shall remain between us."
That was what Lina had written to the lover from whom she had been so tragically parted before the very altar—the poet lover of whom she had been so proud and fond. He read and re-read the note with dazed eyes full of grief and pain.
There was another man in that vast theater, too, who clenched a folded note in his strong, white hand, while he gazed at the beautiful singer with burning, black eyes, and eager, repressed passion in every line of his haughty, superbly handsome face.
He had no eyes for anyone else but Madam Dolores, save that now and then his gaze strayed to the box where Ronald Valchester sat in the shadow of the heavily-fringed curtains, and a gleam of satanic rage and hatred transfigured the dusky beauty of his proud face. Once or twice he opened the note he held and read it over with a grim and deadly smile upon his lips. It was a challenge to a duel; and as Gerald Huntington sat there feasting his eyes on the beauty of the prima donna, and filling his heart with the magic sweetness of her voice, he knew that it was quite probable that this was the last time he might ever behold her charming face.