Beyond The Rocks Part 19

"Bracondale? Lord Bracondale?" interrupted Josiah Brown. "We met him in Paris, did we not, my love?" turning to Theodora. "He dined with us our last evening. Where is he?"

"Oh, you know him, then!" said Mrs. Devlyn, disappointed. "I wanted to be the first to point him out to you. They will make a handsome pair, won't they--he and Miss Winmarleigh?"

"Very," said Theodora, listlessly, with an air of dragging her thoughts from the music with difficulty, while she suddenly felt sick and cold.

"And are they to be married soon?"

"I don't know exactly; but it has been going on for years, and we all look upon it as a settled thing. She is always about with his mother."

"Is that Lord Bracondale's mother--the lady with the coronet of plaits and the huge white aigrette with the diamond drops in it?" Theodora asked. Her voice was schooled, and had no special tones in it. But oh, how she was thrilling with interest and excitement underneath!

"Yes, that is Lady Bracondale. She is quite a type; always dresses in that old-fas.h.i.+oned way, and won't know a soul who is not of her own set.

She is a cousin of one of my husband's aunts. I must introduce you to her."

"She looks pretty haughty," announced Josiah Brown. "I should not care to tread on her toes much." And then he remembered he had seen her years ago driving through the little town of Bracondale.

Theodora asked no more questions. She kept her eyes fixed on the stage, but she knew Hector had raised his gla.s.ses 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 a.s.siduously paying his court. "d.a.m.ned 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."

"Really," said Morella. "I thought everything in Paris was lovely."

"You should go over and see for yourself," he said, "then you could judge. I think most things there are lovely, though."

Miss Winmarleigh raised her gla.s.ses now and examined the house. Her eyes lighted at last on Theodora.

"Dear Lady Bracondale," she said, "do look at that woman in black velvet. What splendid pearls! Do you think they are real? Who is it, I wonder, with Florence Devlyn?"

But Hector felt he could not stay and hear their remarks about his darling, so he got up, and, murmuring he must have a talk to his friends in the house, left the box.

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 ba.n.a.l commonplaces, looking up like that.

Then Josiah leaned forward, proud of his acquaintances.h.i.+p 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-gla.s.ses; 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 G.o.d'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, pa.s.sionately. 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 a.s.sure himself it was there, and she had written it--and it was not all a dream.

Theodora's tender heart was wrung by the pa.s.sionate 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.