She accepted with thanks and put it on-a small set of diamonds no bigger than grains of rice, but real diamonds, he assured her. “My, there is nothing like diamonds to make a lady sparkle,” he said, standing back to admire the chips. “Dammler will be sorry he lost you.” There had been a two-day interval since his last visit.
“We are still friends, Uncle. That’s all we ever were.”
“Ho, you are the slyest girl in town,” he ran on. “You think to make him jealous by parading yourself before him with another man. I hope it may turn the trick for you. Seville is well enough, but no title at all. He is just plain Mr. Seville, even if he has the name of a city. It was not named after him, you may be sure. Well, well, you look very nice. You are in looks tonight with Ann’s diamonds.”
“You will have to paint me thus, Uncle,” she teased in a merry mood.
Her amazement was great when he did not concur. “There is no painting a diamond,” he acknowledged sadly. “A pearl now comes out nicely with a dab of white for a highlight, but a diamond cannot be painted. None of the old masters had the knack of it. I’ve tried all their tricks, but a bit of red or blue or green doesn’t begin to do it. I can’t do it, and in short it can’t be done. It only comes out looking like a sapphire or a garnet. Well, water is the same. Water can’t be painted either. Turner thinks to hide his deficiency by always putting what he is painting upside down in the lake as a reflection, but he fools no one. We are all on to him. I’ll just step along to the saloon and meet Mr. Seville. We want him to know you have a family to protect you. A young lady on her own might be taken up as fair game. I shall just mention Sir Alfred and Lord Dammler to let him know we are not quite nobody.” He mentioned them so often that Seville could not but conclude they were indeed acquainted, intimately.
Seville had a box at the opera by the season. It held six seats, but only the two of them were in the party. Prudence had supposed she was only one of his guests; she was surprised to find herself quite alone with him, and worried a little at it; but they were not stared at or scorned, so she thought it must be all right. Several persons acknowledged Seville, and a few nodded and smiled to her.
At intermission she espied Dammler across the auditorium with a large party, one member of which occupied his whole attention. She was a lovely vision in white chiffon and diamonds, with a riot of some unnatural but lovely shade of curls on her head. She wore a very low-cut gown, and she never took her eyes from Dammler for a fraction of a second. They seemed indecently engrossed in each other, unaware that half the crowd was ogling them. Prudence knew from Dammler's conversation that he had a very active social life quite apart from his afternoons with her, but other than Hettie’s ball she had not actually seen him engaged in It. She found it a distressing sight, but such an interesting one that she could not draw her eyes away from his box.
“I see your friend Dammler is here tonight,” Seville remarked, noticing her staring at him.
“Yes. Who is the lady with him, do you know?”
“Some Phyrne or other,” he answered, raising his glass to examine her more closely with a smile of appreciation. Cybele, of course, but it wouldn’t do to let on to Miss Mallow he was interested in the girl.
“Not a maidenhair fern, I take it,” Prudence said, wondering by what adulteration the girl had achieved such a stunning hue to her hair.
She was at a loss to understand Mr. Seville’s bark of laughter, and why he should say, “That’s a good one, Miss Mallow. A very good one indeed. You are an Original!” No more did she think it worth repeating when a whole bevy of callers came to their box, everyone of them gentlemen. But they all agreed it was a gem of the first water.
This sudden influx into their box attracted a certain degree of attention to it. Lady Melvine, one of Dammler's group, noticed and called it to his attention, but by the time he was looking at them, Prudence’s attention was directed at their guests. They all seemed extremely lively and good-natured. Two of them were being called milord, but she didn’t catch the name, which Uncle Clarence would like to know when she got home.
“Can that possibly be Miss Mallow with the Nabob?” Hettie asked Dammler, levelling her glasses at them. “Yes, certainly it is. How well she looks when she smiles. Only see the collection of old roués with them-Seville should know better. For that matter, Miss Mallow should know better than to be here with him alone. Well, well, she’s flying high.”
“There’s Barrymore. Dash it, Seville shouldn’t present her to him,” Dammler said, frowning.
“Why don’t you drop in on them before intermission is over?”
“To lend the party an air of respectability? It would have rather the opposite effect, I’m afraid.”
“How true. To rush from one light o’ love to another. Too titillating. The cats would love it. I daresay Cybele wouldn’t.”
“Miss Mallow is not in the same category as…“ he slid an eye to his fair charmer, who pouted at him, demanding attention.
“You’d better slip her word when you next see her. Not the thing.”
“I will,” he said, with a last scowl across the hall, then he turned to his female.
Prudence did some soul-searching that night alone in her bed. After spending several hours in Mr. Seville’s jolly company, she immediately forgot him and considered another. She was becoming fonder of Dammler than was wise. For romance he would naturally favour Incomparables of the sort she had glimpsed this evening. It was a byword that every beauty in town was after him. How absurd for her to entertain the idea he felt anything but friendship for herself. He never had, and she had known it from the start. The wonder was that he found anything in her to attract him as a friend. Well, you prudent girl you, she said to herself, time to put all the prudence to use and get yourself in line. Don’t sit waiting at your desk for him to come. If your friend drops by, you will be happy to see him. Too happy, but never mind. You won’t show it, and it will never occur to him. He half thinks you are a man.
The next afternoon, Miss Mallow was honoured once again with a call from Dammler. It was raining, and she assumed they would not be going out. “Hard at it, I see,” he said, seeing she was at her desk, with her hair tousled and her fingers stained with ink. “With all your skylarking you must make use of any odd minute the suitors leave you. You make me realize how hard I should be working.”
“I am not entirely given over to dissipation,” she said, striking an expression that did not go a jot beyond the limits of platonic affection.
“You are on the pathway to hell, milady,” he jeered, waggling a finger at her and smiling more widely than she allowed herself to. “We will have to be rechristening you if you keep up this pace. Hobnobbing with nabobs-too many obs in there-your finely tuned ear won’t like it.”
“That’s all right. We may say what we daren’t write.”
“And sing what is too foolish to say.”
“How is Shilla doing? Leading you a merry chase, I hope.”
He sat in a casual fashion just short of sprawling which she felt instinctively he would not do if he wished to appear at his best with a lady in whom he was interested. “We were wrong to let her bolt on us. The hoyden has fallen in with a caravan of unholy men, and how Wills is to get a dozen camels on stage is beyond me.”
"The excitement occurs off-stage, does it not?”
“Damme, something must happen on stage. She’s become so brazen there’s not a move she makes that can be seen in polite company I can’t have the Mogul wringing his hands and cursing in frustration for two hours. I may have to bring her back to the harem and start all over. But I’ll put her into a novel later and let her go her length. I am too fond of her to give her up.”