"Kitty, make haste!" cried a voice in front, as Kitty began to mount the stairs. "Your quadrille is just called."
Kitty smiled and nodded, but did not hurry her pace by a second. The staircase was not so full as it had been, and she knew well as she mounted it, her slender figure drawn to its full height, her eyes flashing greeting and challenge to those in the gallery, the diamond genius on her spear glittering above her, that she held the stage, and that the play would not begin without her.
And indeed her dress, her brilliance, and her beauty let loose a hum of conversation—not always friendly.
"What is she?" "Oh, something mythological! She's in the next quadrille." "My dear, she's Diana! Look at her bow and quiver, and the moon in her hair." "Very incorrect!—she ought to have the towered crown!" "Absurd, such a little thing to attempt Diana! I'd back Actæon!"
The latter remark was spoken in the ear of Louis Harman, who stood in the gallery looking down. But Harman shook his head.
"You don't understand. She's not Greek, of course; but she's fairyland. A child of the Renaissance, dreaming in a wood, would have seen Artemis so—dressed up and glittering, and fantastic—as the Florentines saw Venus. Small, too, like the fairies!—slipping through the leaves; small hounds, with jewelled collars, following her!"
He smiled at his own fancy, still watching Kitty with his painter's eyes.
"She has seen a French print somewhere," said Cliffe, who stood close by. "More Versailles in it than fairyland, I think!"
"It is she that is fairyland," said Harman, still fascinated.
Cliffe's expression showed the sarcasm of his thought. Fairy, perhaps!—with the touch of malice and inhuman mischief that all tradition attributes to the little people. Why, after that first meeting, when the conversation of a few minutes had almost swept them into the deepest waters of intimacy, had she slighted him so, in other drawing-rooms and on other occasions? She had actually neglected and avoided him—after having dared to speak to him of his secret! And now Ashe's letter of the morning had kindled afresh his sense of rancor against a pair of people, too prosperous and too arrogant. The stroke in the Times had, he knew, gone home; his vanity writhed under it, and the wish to strike back tormented him, as he watched Ashe mounting behind his wife, so handsome, careless, and urbane, his jewelled cap dangling in his hand.