Again Lady Winsleigh shivered a little, but forced herself to shake hands with the notorious stage-Jezebel.
"I shall come and see you in the new piece," she said graciously. "I always take a box on first nights? And your dancing is so exquisite! The very poetry of motion! So pleased to have met you! Good-bye!"
And with a few more vague compliments and remarks about the weather, Lady Winsleigh took her departure. Left alone, the actress threw herself back in her chair and laughed.
"That woman's up to some mischief," she exclaimed sotto voce, "and so is Lennie! I wonder what's their little game? I don't care, as long as they'll keep the high-and-mighty Errington in his place. I'm tired of him! Why does he meddle with my affairs?" Her brows knitted into a frown. "As if he or anybody else could persuade me to go back to--," she paused, and bit her lips angrily. Then she opened the envelope Lady Winsleigh had left with her, and pulled out the bank-notes inside. "Let me see--five, ten, fifteen, twenty! Not bad pay, on the whole! It'll just cover the bill for my plush mantle. Hullo! Who's there?"
Some one knocked at her door.
"Come in!" she cried.
The feeble Tommy presented himself. His weak mouth trembled more than ever, and he was apparently conscious of this, for he passed his hand nervously across it two or three times.
"Well, what's up?" inquired the "star" of the Brilliant, fingering her bank-notes as she spoke.
"Miss Vere," stammered Tommy, "I venture to ask you a favor,--could you kindly, very kindly lend me ten shillings till to-morrow night? I am so pressed just now--and my wife is ill in bed--and--" he stopped, and his eyes sought her face hopefully, yet timidly.
"You shouldn't have a wife, Tommy!" averred Violet with blunt frankness. "Wives are expensive articles. Besides, I never lend. I never give--except to public charities where one's name gets mentioned in the papers. I'm obliged to do that, you know, by way of advertisement. Ten shillings! Why, I can't afford ten pence! My bills would frighten you, Tommy! There go along, and don't cry, for goodness sake! Let your fiddle cry for you!"
"Oh, Miss Vere," once more pleaded Tommy, "if you knew how my wife suffers--"
The actress rose and stamped her foot impatiently.
"Bother your wife!" she cried angrily, "and you too! Look out! or I tell the manager we've got a beggar at the Brilliant. Don't stare at me like that! Go to the d----l with you!"