But this was mere outward seeming. All the enchantment of music
and acting was over. She only heard and saw vaguely, as if it were a
shadowy scene enacted ever so far away. Every now and then her eyes
glanced involuntarily toward Don Gomez, who stood leaning against the
back of the box, pale, languid, graceful, poetic, an altogether
different type of manhood from that with which she had of late been
satiated.
Those deep dark eyes of his had a dreamy look. They gazed across the
dazzling house, into space, above Lady Lesbia's head. They seemed to see
nothing; and they certainly were not looking at her.
Don Gomez was the first man she ever remembered to have been presented
to her who did not favour her with a good deal of hard staring, more or
less discreetly managed, during the first ten minutes of their
acquaintance. On him her beauty fell flat. He evidently failed to
recognise her supreme loveliness. It might be that she was the wrong
type for Cuba. Every nation has its own Venus; and that far away spot
beyond the torrid zone might have a somewhat barbarous idea of beauty.
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