Meanwhile, Hector reached the opera, and made his way to the omnibus box
where he had his seat.
He felt he could not stand Morella Winmarleigh just yet. The second act
of "Faust" was almost over, and with his glass he swept the rows of
boxes in vain to find Theodora. He sat a few minutes, but restlessness
seized him. He must go to the other side and ascertain if she could be
discovered from there. Morella Winmarleigh's box commanded a good view
for this purpose, so after all he would face her.
He looked up at her opposite. She sat there with his mother, and she
seemed more thoroughly wholesomely unattractive than ever to him.
He hated that shade of turquoise blue she was so fond of, and those
unmeaning bits and bows she had stuck about. She was a large young woman
with a stolid English fairness.
Her hair had the flaxen ends and sandy roots one so often sees in those
women whose locks have been golden as children. It was a thin, dank kind
of hair, too, with no glints anywhere. Her eyes were blue and large and
meaningless and rather prominent, and her lightish eyelashes seemed to
give no shade to them.
Morella's orbs just looked out at you like the bow-windows of a sea-side
villa--staring and commonplace. Her features were regular, and her
complexion, if somewhat all too red, was fresh withal; so that,
possessing an income of many thousands, she passed for a beauty of
exceptional merit.
She had a good maid who used her fingers dexterously, and did what she
could with a mistress devoid of all sense of form or color.
Miss Winmarleigh went to the opera regularly and sat solidly through it.
The music said nothing to her, but it was the right place for her to be,
and she could talk to her friends before going on to the numerous balls
she attended.
If she loved anything in the world she loved Hector Bracondale, but her
feelings gave her no anxieties. He would certainly marry her presently,
the affair would be so suitable to all parties; meanwhile, there was
plenty of time, and all was in order. The perfect method of her
account-books, in which the last sixpence she spent in the day was duly
entered, translated itself to her life. Method and order were its
watchwords; and if the people who knew her intimately--such as her
chaperon, Mrs. Herrick, and her maid, Gibson--thought her mean, she was
not aware of their opinion, and went her way in solid rejoicing.
Lady Bracondale was really attached to her. Morella's decorum, her
absence of all daring thought in conversation, pleased her so. She had
none of that feeling when with Miss Winmarleigh she suffered in the
company of her daughter Anne, who said things so often she did not quite
understand, yet which she dimly felt might have two meanings, and one of
them a meaning she most probably would disapprove of.