‘Otho,’ observed Magdalen, in her clear, low tones, ‘excuse me if I remind you that this room is set apart for those who take part in the performance, and I don’t think you ought to be here.’
‘I’m going to take part in the performance,’ said Otho, throwing his head back, and flashing a curious glance upon her—a glance which Ada saw, and in her silly little soul at once decided that Otho was paying her more attention than was agreeable to Miss Wynter. That was delightful to her, and she simpered complacently.
‘You!’ exclaimed Magdalen, who had also seen the glance, and who had hard work not to betray the tremulousness she felt.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Otho, carelessly. ‘What’s to prevent me if I choose?’
He brought forward a chair, and placed it for her with a polite bow, and a wave of his hand, inviting her to be seated. Magdalen behaved as if she were paralysed, as in truth she was, in a manner. She had absolutely no precedent from which to judge the meaning of Otho’s conduct just now. She had studied him, humoured him, flattered him, made him the object of her supreme interest and supreme attention, for more than five years; and within the last year, she had begun to confess that her pains had been in vain—that he had never intended to proceed to anything more than friendship, and was not likely now to change his mind. And then her own deeds had avenged themselves upon her, for in confessing this, she had suffered tortures, and in trying to act upon it, and to shake off her intimacy with him, she had found that she could not. He had made himself master of what heart she possessed. Her resistance this evening to a demand of his had cost her a pang, and this conduct of his, in consequence, bewildered her. She was thrown off her guard; she felt that she was groping in a fog, and she knew not how to battle with him. She repented her now, in her soul, of having thwarted him just to-night, since this was the way in which he chose to revenge himself. She could see nothing except to maintain an unruffled personal dignity, which she knew came easily to her, and, if necessary, to retire altogether from the arena. She was calculating altogether without her host in the matter, as Otho soon proved to her.
She took the chair he offered her, and sat down; and then Otho, taking no further present notice of her, turned to Ada, and, under Magdalen’s eyes, proceeded to inaugurate a flirtation with the young girl, in the most outrageously bad taste, and with a persistency and determination from which, as Magdalen very well saw, a more resolute girl than Ada could with difficulty have withdrawn herself. The only method of resistance would have been for the object of his attentions to close her lips, and entirely refuse to converse with him; and that, of course, was a method which did not for a moment occur to Ada, whose inflammable vanity, utterly unbalanced by common sense, took fire at his attentions, and construed them into proofs of the most flattering regard.
Magdalen sat quite passive under this behaviour until the choir had gone to the concert-room, to sing their glee about ‘the oak and the ash, and the bonny ivy tree,’ and then she said, coldly and deliberately—
‘Ada, I want to speak to you.’
‘Oh, never mind her!’ said Otho, carelessly, almost contemptuously. ‘A sermon should not come before a song, especially such a song as Miss Dixon is going to give us.’
But old habit was yet strong in Ada. Never before had Miss Wynter addressed her without receiving instant and profound attention, and she received it now. Ada gave it almost instinctively.