"Show the lady of title into my dressing-room! I shall be ready for her in ten minutes. Be sure to mention that I am very shy,—and unaccustomed to company!"
And, giggling gently like an awkward school-girl, she held down her head with feigned bashfulness, and stepped mincingly across the stage with such a ludicrous air of prim propriety, that all her associates burst out laughing, and applauded her vociferously. She turned and curtsied to them demurely—then suddenly raising one leg in a horizontal position, she twirled it rapidly in their faces,—then she gave a little shocked cough behind her hand, grinned, and vanished.
When, in the stipulated ten minutes, she was ready to receive her unknown visitor, she was quite transformed. She had arrayed herself in a trailing gown of rich black velvet, fastened at the side with jet clasps—a cluster of natural, innocent, white violets nestled in the fall of Spanish lace at her throat—her face was pale with pearl-powder,—and she had eaten a couple of scented bon-bons to drown the smell of her recent brandy-tipple. She reclined gracefully in an easy chair, pretending to read, and she rose with an admirably acted air of startled surprise, as one of the errand boys belonging to the Brilliant tapped at her door, and in answer to her "Come in!" announced, "Lady Winsleigh!"
A faint, sweet, questioning smile played on the Vere's wide mouth.
"I am not aware that I have the honor of—" she began, modulating her voice to the requirements of fashionable society, and wondering within herself "what the d——l" this woman in the silk and sable-fur costume wanted.
Lady Winsleigh in the meantime stared at her with cold, critical eyes.
"She is positively rather handsome," she thought. "I can quite imagine a certain class of men losing their heads about her." Aloud she said—
"I must apologize for this intrusion, Miss Vere! I dare say you have never heard my name—I am not fortunate enough to be famous,—as you are." This with a killing satire in her smile. "May I sit down? Thanks! I have called upon you in the hope that you may perhaps be able to give me a little information in a private matter—a matter concerning the happiness of a very dear friend of mine." She paused—Violet Vere sat silent. After a minute or two, her ladyship continued in a somewhat embarrassed manner—
"I believe you know a gentleman with whom I am also acquainted—Sir Philip Bruce-Errington."
Miss Vere raised her eyes with charming languor and a slow smile.