XIII
But even with the three sides of the box affording their false show of privacy, it never entered Lucinda's head to sit down and pretend nothing had happened, the instinct to fly at once from this theatre of disgrace was still predominant. Only for a moment she rested standing, while her eyes, darkly dilate, sought Daubeney's, which held a look of such heart-broken regret that they won a compassionate smile even in her hour of affliction, and somehow helped Lucinda pull together the rent and draggled garment of her dignity.
"At least," she said quietly, "Julie Allingham isn't here—thank Heaven for that! You saw him, of course?"
Dobbin made a vague gesture of sympathy: "Frightfully sorry...."
Lucinda shrugged. "Don't be. It wasn't your fault, it was I who insisted on coming here."
Her gaze veered to the floor; but the dancers had already swarmed over and abolished the break in their ranks, and though she looked beyond the sea of bobbing heads, to right and left, reviewing all she could see of the room, Bellamy was nowhere in sight.
"I presume we couldn't have been mistaken...." Dobbin ventured half-heartedly.
"No: it was Bel."
"Hoped we might have been misled by a resemblance. Somehow the poor devil didn't look quite like Bellamy."