"You're an awfully good fellow," he told her on a later occasion. "I
almost believe I'd take your money if you were not a woman." "If I
were not a woman I should not offer it to you--I should want a career
of my own."
"And my career would content you?" he asked, touched.
"Absolutely," she lied. "The interest I should take in it--wouldn't
that be sufficient interest on the loan?"
"There is one thing you have taught me," he said slowly--"how
conventional I am! But every prejudice in me shrinks from your
proposition, much as I admire your manliness."
"Perhaps it could be put on more conventional lines--superficially,"
she suggested in a letter that harked back to this conversation. "One
might go through conventional forms. That adorable Disraeli--I have
just been reading his letters. How right he was not to marry for
love!"
The penultimate stage of the pre-nuptial comedy was reached in the
lobby of the Opera, while Society was squeezing to its carriage. It
was after the _Rheingold_, and poor Lady Chelmer could hardly keep
her eyes open, and actually dozed off as she leaned against a wall, in
patient martyrdom. Walter Bassett had been specially irritating, for
he had not come up to the box once, and everybody knows (as the Hon.
Tolshunt had said, with unwonted brilliance) the _Rheingold_ is in
heavy bars.
"I didn't know you admired Wagner so much," Amber said scathingly, as
Walter pushed through the grooms. "Such a rapt devotee!"
"Wagner is the greatest man of the century. He alone has been able to
change London's dinner-hour."
Amber could not help smiling. "Poor Lady Chelmer!" she said, nodding
towards the drowsing dowager. "Since half-past six!"
"Is that our carriage?" said the "Prisoner of Pleasure," opening her
eyes.
"No, dear--I guess we are some fifty behind. Tolly and the Marquis are
watching from the pavement."
The poor lady sighed and went to sleep again.
"Behold the compensations of poverty," observed Walter Bassett.
"The gallery-folk have to wait and squeeze before the opera; the
carriage-folk after the opera."
"You forget the places they occupy _during_ the opera. Poor Wagner!
What a fight! I wish I could have helped his career." And Amber set a
wistful smile in the becoming frame of her white hood.
"The form of the career appears to be indifferent to you," he said,
with a little laugh.
"As indifferent as the man," she replied, meeting his eyes calmly.
The faint scent of her hair mingled with his pleasurable sense of her
frank originality. For the first time the bargain really appealed
to him. He could not but see that she was easily the fairest of that
crush of fair women, and to have her prostrated at the foot of his
career was more subtly delicious than to have her surrender to his
person. The ball was at his foot in surely the most tempting form that
a ball could take. And the fact that he must leave her hurriedly to
write the musical criticism that was the price of his stall, was not
calculated to diminish his appreciation of all the kingdoms of the
world which his temptress was showing him from her high mountain.
"Alas! I must go and write a notice," he sighed.
"Satan's Secretary?" she queried mischievously.
He started. Had he not been just thinking of her as a Satan in skirts?
"_En attendant_ that I become Satan's master," he replied ambiguously,
as he raised his hat.
"Oh, to drive off with him into the peace and solitude of Love--away
from the grinding paths of ambition," thought Amber, when the horses
pranced up.