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Updated: July 13, 2025
He brought tickets for a matinée d'invitation in Belgrave Square, at which a new and wonderful Russian pianiste was to make a kind of semi-official début, before an audience of critics and distinguished amateurs, and the elect of the musical world. They wore tickets which money could not buy, and were thus a meet offering for Lady Lesbia, and a plausible excuse for an early call. Mr.
She was to stay till the carnival; she was to stay till the week before Easter. Lady Kirkbank insisted upon it; and both Lesbia and Lady Kirkbank upbraided Lady Maulevrier for her cruelty in not joining them at Cannes. So Lady Maulevrier had to resign herself to that solitude which had become almost the habit of her life, and to the society of Mary and the Fräulein.
'I had a kind of vague idea that Smithson would call to-day. He was so fussy about those tickets for the Metzikoff recital. I hate pianoforte recitals, and I detest that starched old duchess, but I suppose I shall have to take you there or poor Smithson will be miserable, said Lady Kirkbank, watching Lesbia keenly over the top of the newspaper.
Among them were several young women of the Blessed Damozel school, who wore flowing garments of sap-green or orche, or puffed raiment of Venetian red, and among whom the cartwheel hat, the Elizabethan sleeve, and the Toby frill were conspicuous. There were very few men except the musical critics in this select assemblage, and Lesbia began to think that it was going to be very dreary.
'It was a mild kind of lunacy, an everlasting opium dream without the opium; but I am grateful to him for living such a life, since it has bequeathed us some exquisite poetry, said Lesbia, who had been too carefully cultured to fleer or flout at Wordsworth.
Lesbia blushed as she looked at the ballet girls, the maskers in their scanty raiment, the demi-mondaines lolling out of their opera boxes, and half out of their gowns, with false smiles and frizzled hair. And then there came the works of that other school which lavishes the finish of a Meissonier on the most meretricious compositions.
To be together, bound nearer to each other than they had ever been yet, than they might ever be again, in the midst of thunder and lightning and dense clouds of spray. This was enough. Once when the Cayman pitched with exceptional fury, when the thunder crashed and roared loudest, Lesbia found her head lying on Montesma's breast and his arms round her, his lips upon her face.
Lady Kirkbank, who pretended to adore genius, was affectionately effusive to Miss Fitzherbert, the popular actress, but she rather ignored the sister. Lesbia was less cordial, and was not enchanted at finding that Miss Fitzherbert shone and sparkled at the breakfast table by the gaiety of her spirits and the brightness of her conversation.
Smithson had been looking away seaward, with a somewhat troubled brow, while that little cap and saucer episode was being enacted. And in the next minute Lesbia had recovered her self-command, and resumed that graceful languor which was one of her charms.
And the doorways would be festooned with roses, as she had seen them the other night at a ball in Grosvenor Square; but the house in Grosvenor Square was a hovel compared with the Smithsonian Palace. Lesbia was beginning to be a little tired of Lady Kirkbank and her surroundings. Life taken prestissimo is apt to pall, Lesbia sighed as she finished her little song.
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