Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/183

 servant of the Prince's, a man named Amiel, who cooks mysterious meals for his master and, imp of mischief, plays strange pranks upon his fellow-*servants.

Soon Tempest, through the instrumentality of his princely friend, makes the acquaintance of the beautiful Lady Sibyl Elton. "No man, I think, ever forgets the first time he is brought face to face with perfect beauty in woman. He may have caught fleeting glimpses of many fair faces often,—bright eyes may have flashed on him like star-*beams,—the hues of a dazzling complexion may now and then have charmed him, or the seductive outlines of a graceful figure;—all these are as mere peeps into the infinite. But when such vague and passing impressions are suddenly drawn together in one focus, when all his dreamy fancies of form and color take visible and complete manifestation in one living creature who looks down upon him, as it were, from an empyrean of untouched maiden pride and purity, it is more to his honor than his shame if his senses swoon at the ravishing vision, and he, despite his rough masculinity and brutal strength, becomes nothing but the merest slave to passion." Thus Geoffrey Tempest when the violet eyes of Sibyl Elton first rest upon him.

The scene is a box at a theatre, the play of