“No, bai Jove, no!” said Max. “I’m always here; and besides, I’ve some business to attend to. Till half-past seven, then—au revoir.”
Max kissed the tips of his gloves to Mrs Marter as he left the room; and soon after he was being driven to his chambers, where he wrote a long letter to Laura, sent it by special messenger, and then sat impatiently waiting for an answer, gnawing his nails the while.
The reply came at last, very short and enigmatical, but it was sufficient to make him draw a long breath, as if of satisfaction, though the words were only—
“Yes! No more; for we are going out.”
Then Max Bray lit a cigar, and sat thinking over the events of the past few days, and of what he had done. He had been several times to the Marters’; he had run down, on the previous day, to Lexville; and a couple of days before that he had posted a letter, the reply to which he now anxiously awaited.
What time would it come? He kept referring to his watch, and then he went over and over again the arrangements for some project he evidently had in view, before sauntering off to his club and dining; when, to his great delight, upon his returning to dress for the evening’s engagement, he found a couple of letters awaiting him, one of which he tore open, and then threw into the fire with an impatient “Pish!” the other he took up and examined carefully, reading the several postmarks, and then, smiling as he glanced at the round legal writing, placed it unopened in his breast-pocket.
There was a strange exultant look in Max Bray’s eye as he drew on his white-kid gloves that evening, and started for the residence of Mrs Saint Clair Marter, where he found the ladies ready, and did not scruple to behave almost rudely to Ella as he prepared to take them down, hardly condescending to speak to her; but as the evening wore on, and they were seated in front of the orchestra, he condescended to make to her a few remarks, more than one of which drew forth a smile, from their satirical nature, as, evidently in a bitter spirit, he drew attention to the various eccentricities of dress in their neighbourhood.
Max Bray did not know, though, that within a few yards sat the man whom he had again and again maligned; neither did Ella Bedford divine that a pair of blood-shot eyes were gazing upon her almost fiercely, as she turned from time to time to respond to the remarks of Max, who talked on, till, towards the end of the opera, he stood up to direct his opera-glass here and there, for indulgence in that graceful, truly refined, nineteenth-century act, so much in vogue at the higher-class places of entertainment.
He had tried in three or four different directions; but, perhaps from being in a satirical mood, he did not see a single face to attract his attention, till, concluding with a grand sweep of the best tier, he suddenly stopped short, kept the glass tightly to his eyes, whisked round swiftly, and sat down; for the field of the glass had for the moment been filled by the figures of Mrs Bray and Sir Philip Vining.
“Bai Jove!” muttered Max to himself; and had Charley Vining and Laura been there all the evening, close behind him? They must have been, and be sitting now at the back of the private box. Bai Jove! what should he do? It was horrible to have gone so far—so near—and then to have all spoiled! What an ass he must have been! Laura had said that they were going out; but who would have thought that they were coming here?