“Oh!—I’m here, for one thing.”
He looked at her victoriously.
“You’ll have a letter from him to-morrow. Poor old chap!”
He spoke contemptuously.
For the first time Lord Holme seemed consciously and unfavourably observant of his wife and Leo. His under-jaw began to move. But Miss Schley came on to the stage again, and he thrust his head eagerly forward.
During the rest of the evening Miss Schley did not relax her ingenious efforts of mimicry, but she took care not to make them too prominent. She had struck her most resonant note in the first act, and during the two remaining acts she merely kept her impersonation to its original lines. Lady Holme watched the whole performance imperturbably, but before the final curtain fell she knew that she was not going to throw cold water on that flame which was burning within her. Fritz’s behaviour, perhaps, decided which of the two actions should be carried out—the douching or the fanning. Possibly Leo Ulford had something to say in the matter too. Or did the faces of friends below in the stalls play their part in the silent drama which moved step by step with the spoken drama on the stage? Lady Holme did not ask questions of herself. When Mr. Laycock and Fritz were furiously performing the duties of a claque at the end of the play, she got up smiling, and nodded to Mrs. Wolfstein in token of her pleasure in Miss Schley’s success, her opinion that it had been worthily earned. As she nodded she touched one hand with the other, making a silent applause that Mrs. Wolfstein and all her friends might see. Then she let Leo Ulford put on her cloak and called pretty words down Mrs. Leo’s trumpet, all the while nearly deafened by Fritz’s demonstrations, which even outran Mr. Laycock’s.
When at last they died away she said to Leo:
“We are going on to the Elwyns. Shall you be there?”
He stood over her, while Mrs. Ulford watched him, drooping her head sideways.
“Yes.”