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think it a very good notion. How else are we to settle our wager?”
    Sir Lucas opened his mouth, but his tongue failed him as, all around them, an enraptured hush fell over the brightly lit tiers of the theatre. As if ensorceled, the audience abruptly stopped talking. All eyes swung to the stage, and three thousands caught their breath in an audible gasp.
    St. Lys had arrived.
    She flitted onto the stage, a tall, willowy, golden-haired beauty. Pink, as all the world knew, was the actress’s favorite color, and she always had a touch of it about her person, whatever the character. Tonight, she had a bright pink ribbon tied at her throat.
    London adored her. “As a goddess sometimes must assume human form to walk amongst us mere mortals,” Mr. Hazlitt had written in a review of Hamlet two years before, “so St. Lys comes to us in the guise of Ophelia.”
    Tonight she was in the happier role of Miss Kate Hardcastle: sometimes a proper young lady, and sometimes a barmaid, but always a ravishing flirt. Mr. Charles Palmer, as Young Marlow, tried desperately to make his presence felt, but it was not to be. No one needed him. No one wanted him. He had as well quit the stage.
    Lucasta moved her chair closer to Dorian’s. “I prefer the opera to the theatre. Music is so edifying. Would you not agree, Your Grace?”
    If Dorian even heard her, he gave no sign of it. He had eyes—and ears—only for St. Lys. Opening her lorgnette, Miss Tinsley leaned forward to scrutinize the actress.
    â€œI don’t see what all the fuss is about,” she said, giving a toss of her head. “She is rather pretty, I suppose, but I’d hardly call her the English Venus, as some do. They call her the Saintly One, too, but that doesn’t make it so! I have heard—”
    Leaning closer to him, she began to whisper. “I have heard countless tales of duels and suicides. They say she has had dozens of lovers, but no one has ever seen her with a white swelling. That’s because, at the first sign of trouble, she heads straight to the apothecary for a dose of pennyroyal.”
    Try as he might, Dorian could not ignore this revolting accusation. “If you are insinuating that Miss St. Lys is a murderer , I would caution you, Miss Tinsley. That is slander.”
    â€œI don’t say it; others do,” she protested. “I have better things to talk about than Celia St. Lys, I promise you, even if others do not. Walk into a shop and the clerk will tell you which soap Miss St. Lys favors—‘Pear’s Almond Blossom, madam. We cannot keep it in stock.’ The Saintly One polishes her teeth with Essence of Pearl. And for the complexion, we are told, nothing but Milk of Roses will answer. She has her own color, too—St. Lys pink, if you please, and a rose to go with it! They sell prints of her in Ackermann’s, and cameos of her in Bond Street. Her face is in every shop window in town, it seems.”
    She went on in this manner for the rest of the play and finished, as the curtain came down, with, “I am sick to death of Celia St. Lys!”
    St. Lys came out for five curtain calls and kissed her fingers to them all. Two adorable children, a boy dressed as Harlequin and a girl dressed as Columbine, came out with her to gather the roses that had been tossed at her feet. At the fifth call, St. Lys slowly pulled the pink ribbon from her neck, smiling cruelly as her adorers in the pit—gentlemen, bank clerks, and footmen all jumbled up together—clamored to be awarded the prize. She seemed unable to choose. She loved them all equally, perhaps. Covering her eyes with one hand, she tossed the ribbon into the pit with the other.
    Anyone would have thought it was a pearl of great price. There was punching and kicking and gouging, until at last a victor emerged with the prize. By that time, of course, St. Lys had left the stage.

Chapter 2
    Lifting her skirts high, much to