“Good-night, Mr. Palma.”

CHAPTER XV.

“Mrs. Orme, I am afraid you will overtax your strength.  You seem to forget the doctor’s caution.”

“No, I am not in the least fatigued, and this soft fresh air and sunshine will benefit me more than all the medicine in your ugly vials.  Mrs. Waul, recollect that I have been shut up for two months in a close room, and this change is really delicious.”

“You have no idea how pale you look.”

“Do I?  No wonder, bleached as I have been in a dark house.  I daresay you are tired, and I insist that you sit yonder under the trees, and rest yourself while I stroll a little farther.  No, keep the shawl, throw it around your own shoulders, which seem afflicted with a chronic chill.  Here is a New York paper; feast on American news till I come back.”

Upon a seat in the garden of the Tuileries Mrs. Orme placed her grey-haired Duenna attendant, and gathering her black-lace drapery about her turned away into one of the broad walks that divided the flower-bordered lawns.

Thin, almost emaciated, she appeared far taller than when last she swept across the stage, and having thrown back her veil, a startling and painful alteration was visible in the face that had so completely captivated fastidious Paris.

Pallid as Mors, the cheeks had lost their symmetrical oval, were hollow, and under the sunken eyes clung dusky circles that made them appear unnaturally large, and almost Dantesque in their mournful gleaming.  Even the lips seemed shrunken, changed in their classic contour; and the ungloved hand that clasped the folds of lace across her bosom was wasted, wan, diaphanous.

That brilliant Parisian career, which had opened so auspiciously, closed summarily during the second week of her engagement in darkness that threatened to prove the unlifting shadow of death.  The severe tax upon her emotional nature, the continued intense strain on her nerves, as night after night she played to crowded houses—­shunning as if it contained a basilisk, the sight of that memorable box—­where she felt, rather than saw, that a pair of violet eyes steadily watched her, all this had conquered even her powerful will, her stern resolute purpose, and one fatal evening the long-tried woman was irretrievably vanquished.

The role was “Queen Katherine,” and the first premonitory faintness rendered her voice uneven, as, kneeling before King Henry, the unhappy wife uttered her appeal: 

                    ..."Alas, sir,

In what have I offended you?  What cause
Hath my behaviour given to your displeasure,
That thus you should proceed to put me off,
And take your good grace from me?  Heaven witness,
I have been to you a true and humble wife."...

As the play proceeded, she was warned by increasing giddiness, and a tremulousness that defied her efforts to control it; and she rushed on toward the close, fighting desperately with physical prostration.