Hilda's plans, lies in wait for her in the armoury, where he has reason to know she means to try the effect of a third and last apparition upon the Princess. She appears; he suddenly confronts her; and, dragging her forward, unveils before himself and the Princess the death-like features of his old love. Recovering from the shock of detection, the Countess pours out upon them both a fury of jealous passion, sinking by degrees into a pathetic, trance-like invocation of the past, under the spell of which the Prince's anger melts away, and the little Princess's terror and excitement change into eager pity. Then, when she sees him almost reconquered, and her rival weeping beside her, she takes the poison phial from her breast, drinks it, and dies in the arms of the man for whose sake she has sacrificed beauty, character, and life itself.
A great actress could hardly have wished for a better opportunity. The scene was so obviously beyond Miss Bretherton's resources that even the enthusiastic house, Kendal fancied, cooled down during the progress of it. There were signs of restlessness, there was even a little talking in some of the back rows, and at no time during the scene was there any of that breathless absorption in what was passing on the stage which the dramatic material itself amply deserved.
'I don't think this will last very long,' said Kendal in Wallace's ear. 'There is something tragic in a popularity like this; it rests on something unsound, and one feels that disaster is not far off. The whole thing impresses me most painfully. She has some capacity, of course; if only the conditions had been different—if she had been born within a hundred miles of the Paris Conservatoire, if her youth had been passed in a society of more intellectual weight—but, as it is, this very applause is ominous, for the beauty must go sooner or later, and there is nothing else.'
'You remember Desforêts in this same theatre last year in Adrienne Lecouvreur?' said Wallace. 'What a gulf between the right thing and the wrong! But come, we must do our duty;' and he drew Kendal forward towards the front of the box, and they saw the whole house on its feet, clapping and shouting, and the curtain just being drawn back to let the White Lady and the Prince appear before it. She was very pale, but the storm of applause which greeted her seemed to revive her, and she swept her smiling glance round the theatre, until at last it rested with a special gleam of recognition on the party in the box, especially on Forbes, who was outdoing himself in enthusiasm. She was called forward again and again, until at last the house was content, and the general exit began.
The instant after her white dress had disappeared from the stage, a little page-boy knocked at the door of the box with a message that 'Miss Bretherton begs that Mrs. Stuart and her friends will come and see her.' Out they all trooped, along a narrow passage, and up a short staircase, until a rough temporary door was thrown open, and they found themselves in the wings, the great stage, on which the scenery was being hastily shifted, lying to their right. The lights were being put out; only a few gas-jets were left burning round a pillar, beside which stood Isabel Bretherton, her long phantom dress lying in white folds about her, her uncle and aunt and her manager standing near. Every detail of the picture—the spot of brilliant light bounded on all sides by dim, far-reaching vistas of shadow, the figures hurrying across the back of the stage, the moving ghost-like workmen all around, and in the midst that white-hooded, languid figure—revived in Kendal's memory whenever in after days his thoughts went wandering back to the first moment of real contact between his own personality and that of Isabel Bretherton.
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