“Yes, you ninny: don’t hang back. He may make your fortune.”
“Well, if you’d like him to come and sit by you I’ll go and take a walk in the Strand,” said Hyacinth, entering into the humour of the occasion but not seeing from where he was placed any gentleman in the box. Millicent explained that the mysterious observer had just altered his position; he had gone to the back, which must have had considerable depth. There were other persons there, out of sight; she and Hyacinth were too much on the same side. One of them was a lady concealed by the curtain; her arm, bare save for its bracelets, was visible at moments on the cushioned ledge. Hyacinth saw it in effect reappear there, and even while the piece proceeded regarded it with a certain interest; but till the curtain fell at the end of the act there was no further symptom that a gentleman wished to get hold of him.
“Now do you say it’s me he’s after?” Millicent asked abruptly, giving him a sidelong dig while the fiddlers in the orchestra began to scrape their instruments for the interlude.
“Of course; I’m only the pretext,” Hyacinth replied, after he had looked a moment, in a manner which he flattered himself was a proof of quick self-possession. The gentleman designated by his friend was once more at the front and leaning forward with his arms on the edge. Hyacinth saw he was looking straight at him, and our young man returned his gaze—an effort not rendered the more easy by the fact that after an instant he recognised him.
“Well, if he knows us he might give some sign, and if he doesn’t he might leave us alone,” Millicent declared, abandoning the distinction she had made between herself and her companion. She had no sooner spoken than the gentleman complied with the first-mentioned of these conditions; he smiled at Hyacinth across the house—he nodded to him with unmistakable friendliness. Millicent, perceiving this, glanced at the young man from Lomax Place and saw that the demonstration had brought a deep colour to his cheek. He was blushing, flushing; whether with pleasure or embarrassment didn’t immediately appear. “I say, I say—is it one of your grand relations?” she promptly asked. “Well, I can stare as well as him”; and she told Hyacinth it was a “shime” to bring a young lady to the play when you hadn’t so much as an opera-glass for her to look at the company. “Is he one of those lords your aunt was always talking about in the Plice? Is he your uncle or your grandfather or your first or second cousin? No, he’s too young for your grandfather. What a pity I can’t see if he looks like you!”
At any other time Hyacinth would have thought these inquiries in the worst possible taste, but now he was too much given up to other reflexions. It pleased him that the gentleman in the box should recognise and notice him, because even so small a fact as this was an extension of his social existence; but it no less surprised and puzzled him, producing altogether, in his easily-excited organism, an agitation of which, in spite of his attempted self-control, the air he had for Millicent was the sign. They had met three times, he and his fellow-spectator; but they had met in quarters that, to Hyacinth’s mind, would have made a furtive wink, a mere tremor of the eyelid, a more judicious reference to the fact than so public a salutation. Our friend would never have permitted himself to greet him first, and this was not because the gentleman in the box belonged—conspicuously as he did so—to a different walk of society. He was apparently a man of forty, tall, lean and loose-jointed; he fell into lounging, dawdling attitudes and even at a distance looked lazy. He had a long, amused, contented face, unadorned with moustache or whisker, and his brown hair, parted at the side, came forward on either temple in a rich, well-brushed lock, after the fashion of the portraits of 1820. Millicent had a glance of such range and keenness that she was able to make out the details of his evening-dress, of which she appreciated the “form”; to observe the character of his large hands; and to note that he continually smiled at something, that his eyes were extraordinarily light in colour and that in spite of the dark, well-marked brows arching over them his fine skin never had produced and never would produce a beard of any strength. Our young lady pronounced him mentally a “swell” of the first magnitude and wondered more than ever where he had picked up Hyacinth. Her companion seemed to echo her thought when he exclaimed with a little surprised sigh, almost an exhalation of awe: “Well, I had no idea he was one of that lot!”
“You might at least tell me his name, so that I shall know what to call him when he comes round to speak to us,” the girl said, provoked at her companion’s reserve.
“Comes round to speak to us—a chap like that!” Hyacinth echoed.
“Well, I’m sure if he had been your own brother he couldn’t have grinned at you more! He may want to make my acquaintance after all; he won’t be the first.”
The gentleman had once more retreated from sight, and there was that amount of evidence of the intention she imputed to him. “I don’t think I’m at all clear that I’ve a right to tell his name.” Hyacinth spoke responsibly, yet with all disposition to magnify an incident which deepened the brilliancy of the entertainment he had been able to offer Miss Henning. “I met him in a place where he may not like to have it known he goes.”