“And the sympathetic current did the rest!” added Eugenie Gontier, looking at him tenderly.  “Since then you have consecrated to me a part of whatever time is at your disposal, and I assure you that I never have been so happy, nor have felt so flattered, in my life.”

“Second act!” came the voice of the call-boy from the corridor.

“Will you return here after the fourth act?” said the actress, rising.  “I shall wish to know how you find me in the great scene, and whether there is another princess de Bouillon among the audience—­beware of her!”

“You know very well that there is not.”

“Not yet, perhaps, but military men are so inconstant!  By and by, Maurice!” she murmured, with a smile.

“By and by, Adrienne!” Henri replied, kissing her hand.

He accompanied her to the steps that led to the stage, and, lounging along the passage that ends at the head of the grand stairway, he entered the theatre and hastened to his usual seat in the third row of the orchestra.

CHAPTER XII

RIVAL BEAUTIES

It was Tuesday, the subscription night; the auditorium was as much the more brilliant as the play was more interesting than on other nights.  In one of the proscenium boxes sat the Duchesse de Montgeron with the Comtesse de Lisieux; in another the Vicomtesse de Nointel and Madame Thomery.  In the first box on the left Madame Desvanneaux was to be seen, with her husband and her son, the youthful and recently rejected pretender to the hand of Mademoiselle de Vermont.

Among the subscription seats in the orchestra sat the Baron de Samoreau, the notary Durand, treasurer of the Industrial Orphan Asylum; the aide-de-camp of General Lenaieff, beside his friend the Marquis de Prerolles.  One large box, the first proscenium loge on the right, was still unoccupied when the curtain rose on the second act.

The liaison of Eugenie Gontier with the Marquis de Prerolles was not a mystery; from the moment of her entrance upon the scene, it was evident that she “played to him,” to use a phrase in theatrical parlance.  Thus, after the recital of the combat undertaken in behalf of Adrienne by her defender—­a recital which she concluded in paraphrasing these two lines: 

     ’Paraissez, Navarrois, Maures et Castilians,
     Et tout ce que l’Espagne a produit de vaillants,’

many opera-glasses were directed toward the spectator to whom the actress appeared to address herself, when suddenly a new object of interest changed the circuit of observation.  The door of the large, right-hand box opened, and Zibeline appeared, accompanied by the Chevalier de Sainte-Foy, an elderly gallant, carefully dressed and wearing many decorations, and whose respectable tale of years could give no occasion for malicious comment on his appearance in the role of ’cavalier servente’.  Having assisted his companion to remove her mantle, he profited by the instant of time she took to settle her slightly ruffled plumage before the mirror, to lay upon the railing of the box her bouquet and her lorgnette.  Then he took up a position behind the chair she would occupy, ready to assist her when she might deign to sit down.  His whole manner suggested a chamberlain of the ancient court in the service of a princess.