"What's up, Gilbert?" Henry whispered to him. "Are you ill?"
"Ill!" Gilbert exclaimed, looking up at Henry with a whimsical smile. "Man, Quinny, I'm dying! Go away like a good chap and let me die in peace. Tell all my friends that my last words were...."
Henry went back to his seat beside Mary and whispered to her that Gilbert was too nervous and agitated to be sociable ... "some sort of stage fright!..." and they pretended not to notice that he was huddled in the darkest corner of the box. "Thank goodness," Henry said to the others, "a novelist doesn't get a storm of nerves on the day of publication!" Leaning over the edge of the box, he could see Lady Cecily sitting in the stalls, with Jimphy by her side ... and for a while he forgot the play and Mary and Gilbert's agitation. She was sitting forward, looking intently at the stage, and as he watched her, she laughed and turned to Jimphy as if she would share her pleasure with him, but Jimphy, lying back in his stall, was fiddling with his programme, utterly uninterested. She glanced up at the box, her eyes meeting his, and smiled at him.
"Who is it?" said Mary, leaning towards him.
"Oh ... Lady Cecily Jayne!" he answered, discomposed by her question.
"She's very beautiful, isn't she?"
"Yes."
They turned again to the stage and were silent until the end of the first act. There was a burst of laughter, and then the curtain descended, to rise again in quick response to the applause.
"Cheering a chap at his funeral!" said Gilbert, groaning with delight as he listened to the shouts and handclaps.