If she's done up--"
"Ah!" said Lord Holme, striking a match, and holding out his cigarette
case, regardless of regulations.
A momentary desire to look in at the Elwyns' possessed him. Then he
thought of a supper-party and forgot it.
CHAPTER XI
MRS. WOLFSTEIN was right. There was money in Miss Schley's performance.
Her sly impropriety appealed with extraordinary force to the peculiar
respectability characteristic of the British temperament, and her
celebrity, hitherto mainly social, was suddenly and enormously increased.
Already a popular person, she became a popular actress, and was soon as
well-known to the world in the streets and the suburbs as to the world in
the drawing-rooms of Mayfair. And this public celebrity greatly increased
the value that was put upon her in private--especially the value put upon
her by men.
The average man adores being connected openly with the woman who is the
rage of the moment. It flatters his vanity and makes him feel good all
over. It even frequently turns his head and makes him almost as
intoxicated as a young girl with adulation received at her first ball.
The combination of Miss Schley herself and Miss Schley's celebrity--or
notoriety--had undoubtedly turned Lord Holme's head. Perhaps he had not
the desire to conceal the fact. Certainly he had not the finesse. He
presented his turned head to the world with an audacious simplicity that
was almost laughable, and that had in it an element of boyishness not
wholly unattractive to those who looked on--the casual ones to whom even
the tragedies of a highly-civilised society bring but a quiet and cynical
amusement.
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