The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-12-18

ways gala occasion, was this year more brilliant than ever before. The great audience was a cross section of all that is richest and most fashion able in the innermost circles of New York's smartest set.
 But it was not the glittering presence of countless Astors, Vanderbilts. Harri- mans and others of society's mightiest that riveted more than anything elss the interest of this splendid assemblage. Neither was it the artistic efforts of the great Gall-C Curci and her fellow songsters.
 What stirred these opening night operagoers to endless speculation and caused prodigious amount of curious staring and we'll bred whispering was the fact that in one of the most highly desirable of the grand tier boxes sat Miss Alice Antoinette De Lamar.
 Miss De Lamar is Americas most mysterious heiress. Other young women may be as beautiful or have as many millions as she has, but none is sur rounded by such deep and perplexing mystery Ever since the death of her father, the rich and eccentric old mine owner who left her a generous share of his huge fortune, she has been the most bafiing of human riddles.
 Miss De Lamar's presence at the Metropolitan as box holder signifies two things, first, that she has finally emerged from the strange life of hiding which she entered upon after her fathers death some years ago. And second, that she is being at least tenta- lively accepted for the place in fashion able society to which it has long been felt that she was entitled by reason of her beauty and her wealth.
 Not every member of fashionable sc- ciety, of course, is box holder at the Metropolitan, but the possession of box is accepted as an indication that one has been found fit to step within the charmed circle and rub shoulders with the bluest blood of our aristocracy.
 But why has Alice De Lamar sud- denly decided to take the place in soci- ety which many think is rightfully hersf What has impelled her to leave the jealously guarded seclusion in which she has lived for 50 many years? Does she have reason to believe that avari- cious fortune hunters are any less numerous or any less crafty in their methods than they vera when, as it was said, she went into hidng to es- 2 cape them? fsS
 These are questions which society ksSs; has not yet succeeded in answering g satisfactorily. Why she has suddenly h emerged from her hiding is as difficult of explanation as the reason for her $ going into it in the first place always RM has been. Ns
 Still another and even more perplex- N ing phase was added to the mystery by n the discovery of the identity of the two L women who shared Miss De Lamar's IS box at the Metropolitan on the evening IS when her appearance there excited kM such extraordinary interest.
 One of these women was Alice De Lanar's mother who, after her divorce from Captain De Lamar, I.arried James R. Hatmaker, former associate of the late Cornelius Vanderbilt, and who has recently been divorced from him. The other was Alice's half-sister, Consuelo Hatmaker.
 Society gaspcd and 1t gaaped moro when it learned that Mrs. Hatmaker and the little daughter by her second marriage have come here ts raake their home with Alice. Mrs. Hatmaker hardly waited for tho ink on her divorce de- cree to dry before leaving Paris, whero she and her latest husband have lived