“Are you really ill, miss?” asked the woman eagerly.
“Yes. I’ve felt unwell all day, and the heat to-night has upset me. If I went on again I should faint on the stage. Go and tell Mr Farquhar at once.”
The woman obeyed, whereupon Stella Steele commenced to divest herself rapidly of the rich and daring gown. Her one desire was to get away from the theatre as soon as possible.
Mr Farquhar, the stage-manager, came to the door to express regret at her illness, and within a few minutes Miss Lambert, the understudy, was dressing to go on and fulfil her place in the final scene.
Her car took her home to the pretty flat in Stamfordham Mansions, just off Kensington High Street, where she lived alone with Mariette her French maid, and there, in her dainty little drawing-room, she sat silent, almost statuesque, for fully five minutes.
“Is it possible?” she gasped. “Is it really possible that such a dastardly plot is being carried out!” she murmured in agitation.
Her little white hands clenched themselves, and her pretty mouth grew hard. She was sweet and charming, without any stage affectations. Yet, when she set herself to combat the evil designs of her enemy-father she was not a person to be trifled with—as these records of her adventures will certainly show.
“I wonder if Seymour can have been misled?” she went on, rising from her chair as she spoke aloud to herself. “And yet,” she added, “he is always so level-headed!”
Mariette—a slim, dark-eyed girl—entered with a glass tube of solidified eau-de-Cologne which she rubbed upon her mistress’s brow, and then Ella passed into her own room and quickly dismissed the girl for the night.
As soon as Mariette had gone she flung off her dress and took another from her wardrobe, a rough brown tweed golfing-suit, and put on a close-fitting cloth hat to match. Then, getting into a thick blanket-coat, she pulled on her gloves and, taking up a small leather blouse-case, went out, closing the door noiselessly after her.