The Hippodrome was crowded on the night of Miss King's first appearance.
Jules, in evening dress as usual, leaned against the railing behind the
highest tier of seats. At this moment he felt that he had been duped by
fate, and he wanted to revenge himself on the crowd that had come to
rejoice over his disappointment; for their presence seemed like a
personal insult to him. But for the machinations of that crazy
Englishwoman, Blanche would now be going on with her work; by this time
they might have made arrangements for her visit to America in the early
summer. However, the mischief was done, and there was no knowing when it
would be undone. Blanche might have recovered in a few weeks from her
terror of the plunge; but after once yielding to it, she would probably
never get over it.
Jules believed in presentiments, and he had a strong presentiment that
Blanche had taken her plunge for the last time. He tried to console
himself, however, with the hope that Lottie King would make a failure.
The extensive advertising that Marshall had given her made Jules hate
the girl; her name had been posted in places all over London where his
wife's alone had been. To Jules this was the most cruel evidence of his
own decadence.
Half an hour before it was time for Blanche to appear Jules sauntered
toward her dressing-room. When he reached the door, he stopped in
surprise; he could hear an unfamiliar voice speaking English. Some one
must be in there with Blanche and Madeleine. When he entered, he saw a
plump, pretty young woman, with a shock of yellow hair and big blue
eyes, dressed in a tight-fitting bathing-suit of blue flannel and in
blue silk stockings. He recognized her at once from her photographs.
"Hello!" she cried, glancing at Jules familiarly. "Is this him?
Introduce me, won't you?"
For a moment Blanche, whose face had been made up and whose figure,
dressed in white silk tights, was covered with the cloak she threw off
as she entered the ring, looked confused. Then she presented Jules to
Miss King, who beamed upon him with extravagant pleasure.
"Your wife's been telling me about you," she said. "I've been making
friends with her. I wanted to see what she was like, and I supposed
she'd want to see what I was like. So we've agreed not to scratch each
other's eyes out. You speak English too, don't you?"
This gave Jules an opportunity to reiterate his story about having
learned English in America.
"So you've been to America!" Miss King cried, her eyes bigger than ever,
and her open mouth showing her white, square teeth. "Were you with a
troupe there?"