Free The Glittering Lights (Bantam Series No. 12) by Barbara Cartland Page A

wait there for me, Hannah, in the evening. That is, if anyone takes me out.”
    “I don’t know what’s going on,” Hannah said angrily. “All I know, Miss Cassandra, is that you’re buying yourself a heap of trouble and no good will come of it, you mark my words!”
    “I am marking them,” Cassandra assured her.
    At the same time she prayed that Hannah was wrong and that her plan would not fail.
    The Stage-door keeper of The Prince’s Theatre looked up in surprise when, at 7:30 p.m., a lady dressed in what seemed to him to be the height of fashion appeared at the glass window behind which he habitually sat.
    “What d’you want?” he asked suspiciously.
    He was an old man who had been at The Prince’s for over twenty-five years and was known amongst the cast as “Old Growler.”
    “I would like to see Mrs. Langtry.”
    “Well, you can’t,” he answered. “She sees no-one until after the performance, and then not many of ‘em can get in.”
    “I am sure she is very popular,” the lady replied, “and that is why I wish to see her now.”
    “I told you. She don’t see no-one at this time.”
    Cassandra put the letter down in front of him and laid on top of it a sovereign.
    ‘Will you tell Mrs. Langtry that I have something very valuable to give her,” she said, “and I cannot entrust it to anyone else, not even you.”
    “Old Growler” stared at the sovereign. There was a greedy look in his eyes.
    He was used to tips from the top-hatted gentlemen who called after the performance, but it was not often the feminine sex was so generous.
    ‘I’ll see wot I can do,” he said at length grudgingly, and pocketed the sovereign with a swiftness which came from long practice.
    He picked up the note and Cassandra heard his footsteps echoing on the flagged floor as he went along a narrow passage and disappeared up a winding iron staircase.
    She waited thinking that this was the first time she had ever been backstage and realised how unattractive it was. The walls had been written on in pencil and it must have been years since they had been painted.
    There was the smell of dirt, dust and grease-paint and it was also extremely cold. Cassandra pulled her velvet wrap closer around her shoulders.
    She wished she could have worn one of her furs, but she felt it would have seemed too extravagant for someone who was not a name in the theatre world.
    She waited impatiently.
    Supposing after all Mrs. Langtry would not see her? She felt quite certain that what she had said about having something valuable to give her would have been repeated by the door-keeper and would have made the lady curious.
    After all, Sir James would undoubtedly have been very generous in the past. He always was.
    She heard the footsteps of the door-keeper returning long before she saw him and finally he appeared to say gruffly:
    “Come this way.”
    Cassandra, with a little throb of her heart, followed him down the passage.
    The place seemed to get even dirtier as she progressed, but when they entered Mrs. Langtry’s brilliantly lit Dressing-Room, it was to find it exactly as she had expected it would be.
    She had read in one of the newspapers:
    “Mrs. Langtry insists on having each Dressing-Room, in whatever theatre she is appearing, arranged as to furniture, etc., as nearly alike as possible. This is one of the first things her Stage-manager attends to on reaching a City. Most of the paraphernalia is carried with her when Mrs. Langtry is on tour.”
    The Dressing-Room, Cassandra saw, was not large and the most important piece of furniture was the dressing-table which was of white wood heavily enamelled in white.
    It was elaborately ornamented with cupids and butterflies and festooned with old rose satin lined with muslin.
    The mirror was electro-lighted and there was a tray on the table containing Mrs. Langtry’s toilet set. The brush, comb, scent bottle and powder-box were of gold, each engraved with her initials, the monograms being