They were not looking her way, and Letitia riveted the glass on them. The colonel was sitting up and looking about alertly. He was instinct with life, enjoyment, and animation. With his neck craned out of his collar, he was surveying the audience, now and then turning to impart some hasty comment to Viola. He had the eager, happy air of a man who is in his element.
Viola was sitting back rather listlessly, with her hands clasped in her lap. She was dressed simply but prettily in gray, and wore no hat. The color was the one most perfectly suited to harmonize with her eyes and hair. Among the handsome and well-dressed women that surrounded her, she preserved the same suggestion of distinction and superiority that Letitia had recognized when she saw her in her own ragged drawing-room.
Holding out the glass, Letitia turned to Gault, who was sitting silent in the shelter of the curtain, and said:
“Colonel Reed’s sitting down there.”
He gave the slightest possible start, and moving forward, looked in the direction she indicated.
“So he is,” he said in an uninterested tone, “and with his daughter.”
Unfortunately, Tod McCormick, who had drawn up as close to Letitia as his chair would permit, heard this short dialogue and pricked up his ears.
“Colonel Reed,” he said vivaciously, “and his daughter? Where?”
He bent forward, his lean neck stretched out, his weazened visage full of a curiosity that was only naïvely boyish, but that on his ugly and insignificant features acquired a mean and disagreeable air.
“By gracious!” he said, after surveying the colonel with a knowing grin. “At the opera, in the best seats, dressed like the lilies of the field—oh, you old rascal!”