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"I haven't seen you to speak to since that little note of yours." A very faint colour rose in his faded cheeks. "After Miss Schley's first night?" he murmured. His yellow fingers moved restlessly. "Do you know that your son told me you would write?" she continued. She was leaning back in her chair, half hidden by the curtain of the box. "Leo!" Sir Donald's voice was almost sharp and startling.
The proof of the superiority of American gunnery was demonstrated in every naval battle. The accurate aim of Dewey's gunners at Manilla, and Sampson and Schley's at Santiago, was nothing less than wonderful. No less wonderful, however, was the accuracy of the Americans than the inaccuracy of the Spaniards, who seemed almost unable to hit anything.
Commodore Schley's reply was that he was afraid the Vizcaya would ram the Brooklyn. This colloquy referred to a striking maneuver of the flagship Brooklyn early in the engagement at Santiago, which has been commented on before.
"See," she seemed to say, "I am monarch of all I survey"; and she looked every inch a queen, as she swayed slowly in the long ground swell, her ensign snapping in the brisk breeze and Admiral Schley's flag standing out like a board. From our proximity to the shore we were enabled to obtain a better view than before.
Schley's flying squadron, finally relieved from apprehension as to the course of the Spanish fleet, left Hampton Roads to increase the naval strength in West Indian waters. The great battle-ship "Oregon," after a record-beating voyage around Cape Horn, in which her machinery met and withstood every imaginable strain, arrived at the rendezvous.
Lady Holme was certain that the result of Miss Schley's performance would be that were she to do things now which, done before the Arkell House ball and this first night, would not have been noticed, or would have been merely smiled at, they would be commented upon with acrimony, exaggerated, even condemned. Miss Schley was turning upon her one of those mirrors which distorts by enlarging.
Even Sir Donald, who was next to her, and who once in the most definite moment of Miss Schley's ingenious travesty looked at her for an instant, could not discern that she was aware of what was amusing or enraging all her acquaintances. Naturally she had grasped the situation at once, had discovered at once why Miss Schley was anxious for her to be there.
At a little distance there was an odd resemblance in the one white face and fair hair to the other. Miss Schley's way of moving, too, had a sort of reference to Lady Holme's individual walk. There were several things characteristic of Lady Holme which Miss Schley seemed to reproduce, as it were, with a sly exaggeration.
She found herself wondering whether it were Miss Schley's physical resemblance to her which had first attracted Fritz, the touch of his wife in a woman who was not his wife and who was what men call "a rascal." Perhaps Fritz loved Miss Schley's imitation of her.
"Because she's something like you, but low down, where you'd never go." He drew his chair a little closer to hers. "Would you?" he added, almost in a whisper. Mr. Laycock, who was in raptures over Miss Schley's performance, had got up to speak to Fritz, but found the latter being steadily hypnotised by Mrs. Leo's trumpet, which went up towards his mouth whenever he opened it.
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