He could only stare his astonishment.
“Or his tool or his creature in any way?” she said, gathering vehemence with speech. “Oh, sir! why should you wonder? And whither were his innuendoes directed, and what the reason that he disavowed your claim of friendship?”
“Surely he did not!”
“Not—not? And you pass under an assumed name. Will you deny it?”
“No, madam.”
She gave a great sigh, and turned her attention to the orchestra, that was beginning to tune up for the second act.
“You will have a cold journey,” she said. “Good-bye!”
He echoed her adieu with a composed gallantry, and stepped from the box, a man of ice. Humming (horribly out of tune, it must be said) a fragment of some late-heard melody, he lounged through his tier of the auditorium, and even paused, before leaving the house, at a point whence he could obtain a comprehensive view of the assembly. Here, glancing down into the pit, his gaze was instantly riveted upon the figure of a man that sat, lolling in an ungainly manner, against the wooden partition that enclosed the orchestra.
“Now, by Heaven,” muttered the observer, “if you are not my old friend of the fishing-rod, there is no virtue in the name of Brander!”
As he thus spoke under his breath, the man below, moved by that telepathic force that is called sympathy, looked up, and catching the other’s eye, started violently, and immediately shifted his position so as to present nothing but a back of rusty broadcloth to the inquisition of the boxes.