The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection. Glyn Elinor

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      He was thankful at least Theodora was sitting on the pit tier--he could walk along the gangway and talk to her from the front.

      She saw him coming and was prepared, so no wild roses tinged her cheeks, and her greeting was gravely courteous, that was all.

      An icy feeling crept over him. What was the change, this subtle change in voice and eyes? He suddenly had the agonizing sensation of being a great way off from her, shut out of paradise--a stranger. What had happened? What had he done?

      Every one knows the Opera-House, and where he would be standing, and the impossibility of saying anything but the most banal commonplaces, looking up like that.

      Then Josiah leaned forward, proud of his acquaintanceship with a peer, and said in a distinct voice:

      "Won't you come into the box, Lord Bracondale? There is plenty of room." He had not taken to either Delaval Stirling or Chris Harford, and thought a change of company would not come amiss. They had ignored him, and should pay for it.

      Hector made his way joyfully to the back, and, entering, was greeted affably by his host, so the other two men got up to leave to make room for him.

      He sat down behind Theodora, and Mrs. Devlyn saw it would be wiser to conciliate Josiah by her interested conversation.

      She hoped to make a good thing out of this millionaire and his unknown wife, and it would not do to ruffle him at this stage of the affair.

      Theodora hardly turned, thus Hector was obliged to lean quite forward to speak to her.

      "I have seen my sister to-night," he said, "and she wants so much to meet you. I said perhaps she would find you to-morrow. Will you be at home in the afternoon any time?"

      "I expect so," replied Theodora. She was longing to face him, to ask him if it was true he was going to marry that large, pink-faced young woman opposite, who was now staring down upon them with fixed opera-glasses; but she felt frozen, and her voice was a frozen voice.

      Hector became more and more unhappy. He tried several subjects. He told her the last news of her father and Mrs. McBride. She answered them all with the same politeness, until, maddened beyond bearing, he leaned still farther forward and whispered in her ear:

      "For God's sake, what is it? What have I done?"

      "Nothing," said Theodora. What right had she to ask him any question, when for these seven nights and days since they had parted she had been disciplining herself not to think of him in any way? She must never let him know it could matter to her now.

      "Nothing? Then why are you so changed? Ah, how it hurts!" he whispered, passionately. And she turned and looked at him, and he saw that her beautiful eyes were no longer those pure depths of blue sky in which he could read love and faith, but were full of mist, as of a curtain between them.

      He put his hand up to touch the little gold case he carried always now in his waistcoat-pocket, which contained her letter. He wanted to assure himself it was there, and she had written it--and it was not all a dream.

      Theodora's tender heart was wrung by the passionate distress in his eyes.

      "Is that your mother over there you were with?" she asked, more gently. "How beautiful she is!"

      "Yes," he said, "my mother and Morella Winmarleigh, whom the world in general and my mother in particular have decided I am going to marry."

      She did not speak. She felt suddenly ashamed she could ever have doubted him; it must be the warping atmosphere of Mrs. Devlyn's society for these last days which had planted thoughts, so foreign to her nature, in her. She did not yet know it was jealousy pure and simple, which attacks the sweetest, as well, as the bitterest, soul among us all. But a thrill of gladness ran through her as well as shame.

      "And aren't you going to marry her, then?" she said, at last. "She is very handsome."

      Hector looked at her, and a wave of joy chased out the pain he had suffered. That was it, then! They had told her this already, and she hated it--she cared for him still.

      "Surely you need not ask me," he said, deep reproach in his eyes. "You must be very changed in seven days to even have thought it possible."

      The shame deepened in Theodora. She was, indeed, unlike herself to have been moved at all by Mrs. Devlyn's words, but she would never doubt again, and she must tell him that.

      "Forgive me," she said, quite low, while she looked away. "I--of course I ought to be pleased at anything which made you happy, but--oh, I hated it!"

      "Theodora," he said, "I ask you--do not act with me ever--to what end? We know each other's hearts, and I hope it would pain you were I to marry any other woman, as much as in like circumstances it would pain me."

      "Yes, it would pain me," she said, simply. "But, oh, we must not speak thus! Please, please talk of the music, or the--the--oh, anything but ourselves."

      And he tried hard for the few moments which remained before the curtain rose again. Tried hard, but it was all dust and ashes; and as he left the box and returned to his own seat next door his heart felt like lead. How would he be able to follow the rules he had laid down for himself during his week of meditations in Paris alone?

      "You see, dear Lady Bracondale," Morella Winmarleigh had been saying, "Hector knows that woman with the pearls. He is sitting talking to her now."

      "Hector knows every one, Morella. Lend me your glasses, mine do not seem to work to-night. Yes, I suppose by some she would be considered pretty," Lady Bracondale continued, when the lorgnette was fixed to her focus. "What do you think, dear?"

      "Pretty!" exclaimed Miss Winmarleigh. "Oh no! Much too white, and, oh--er--foreign-looking. We must find out who she is."

      The matter was not difficult. Half the house had been interested in the new-comer, the beautiful new-comer with the wonderful pearls, who must be worth while in some way, or she would not be under the wing of Florence Devlyn.

      By the time Hector again entered their box in the last act, Miss Winmarleigh had obtained all the information she wanted from one of the many visitors who came to pay their court to the heiress. And the information reassured her. Only the wife of a colonial millionaire; no one of her world or who could trouble her.

      Early next morning, while she sat in her white flannel dressing-gown, her hair screwed in curling-pins, after the Brantinghams' ball, she wrote in her journal the customary summary of her day, and ended with: "H.B. returned--same as usual, running after a new woman, nobody of importance; but I had better watch it, and clinch matters between him and me before Goodwood. Ordered the pink silk after all, from the new little dressmaker, and beat her down three pounds as to price. Begun Marvaloso hair tonic."

      Then, as it was broad daylight, after carefully replacing in its drawer this locked chronicle of her maiden thoughts, she retired to bed, to sleep the sleep of those just persons whose digestions are as strong as their absence of imagination.

      XVIII

      Next day Lady Anningford СКАЧАТЬ