Theodora asked no more questions. She kept her eyes fixed on the stage,
but she knew Hector had raised his glasses now and was scanning the box,
and had probably seen her.
What ought it to matter to her that he should be going to marry Miss
Winmarleigh? He could be nothing to her--only--only--but perhaps it was
not true. This woman, Mrs. Devlyn, whom she began to feel she should
dislike very much, had said it was looked upon as settled, not that it
was a fact. How could a man be going to marry one woman and make
desperate love to another at the same time? It was impossible--and
yet--she would not look in any case. She would not once raise her eyes
that way.
And so in these two boxes green jealousy held sway, and while Hector
glared across at Theodora she smiled at Delaval Stirling, and spoke
softly of the music and the voices, though her heart was torn with pain.
"Do you see Hector Bracondale is back again, Delaval?" Mrs. Devlyn said.
"Do you know why he stayed in Paris so long? I heard--" And she
whispered low, so that Theodora only caught the name "Esclarmonde de
Chartres" and their modulated mocking laughter.
How they jarred upon her! How she felt she should hate London among all
these people whose ways she did not know! She turned a little, and
Josiah's vulgar familiar face seemed a relief to her, and her tender
eyes melted in kindliness as she looked at him.
"You are very pale to-night, my love," he said. "Would you like to go
home?"
But this she would not agree to, and pulled herself together and tried
to talk gayly when the curtain went down.
And Hector blamed his own folly for having come up to this box at all.
Here he must be glued certainly for a few moments; now that they could
talk, politeness could not permit him to fly off at once.
"The house is very full," Miss Winmarleigh said--it was a remark she
always made on big nights--"and yet hardly any new faces about."
"Yes," said Hector.
"Does it compare with the Opera-House in Paris, Hector?" Miss
Winmarleigh hardly ever went abroad.
"No," said Hector.--Not only had Delaval Stirling retained his seat, but
Chris Harford, Mrs. Devlyn's brother, had entered the box now and was
assiduously paying his court. "Damned impertinence of the woman,
forcing her relations upon them like that," he
thought.--"Oh--er--no--that is, I think the Paris Opera-House is a
beastly place," he said, absently, "a dull, heavy drab brown and dirty
gilding, and all the women look hideous in it."