And as again a stream of light from a music-hall façade poured into the carriage, Waggin was aware of a flushed, rebellious countenance, and dark eyes full of some passionate feeling, not very easy to understand.
"He is at your feet, dear goose!" murmured the little gray-haired lady—"make your own conditions!"
"No, no!—never. Not with Edward Newbury! He seems the softest, kindest—and underneath—iron! Most people are taken in. I'm not."
There was silence in the car. Waggin was uneasily pondering. Nothing—she knew it—would be more acceptable to Lady Coryston than this match, though she was in no sense a scheming mother, and had never taken any special pains on Marcia's behalf. Her mind was too full of other things. Still undoubtedly this would suit her. Old family—the young man himself heir presumptive to a marquisate money—high character—everything that mortal mother could desire. And Marcia was attracted—Waggin was certain of it. The mingled feeling with which she spoke of him proved it to the hilt. And yet—let not Mr. Newbury suppose that she was to be easily run to earth! In Waggin's opinion he had his work cut out for him.
Covent Garden filled from floor to ceiling with a great audience for an important "first night"—there is no sight in London, perhaps, that ministers more sharply to the lust of modern eyes and the pride of modern life. Women reign supreme in it. The whole object of it is to provide the most gorgeous setting possible, for a world of women—women old and young—their beauty or their jewels, their white necks and their gray heads; the roses that youth wears—divinely careless; or the diamonds wherewith age must make amends for lost bloom and vanished years.
Marcia never entered the Coryston box, which held one of the most coveted positions on the grand tier, without a vague thrill of exultation; that instinctive, overbearing delight in the goods of Vanity Fair, which the Greek called hubris, and which is only vile when it outlives youth. It meant in her—"I am young—I am handsome—the world is all on my side—who shall thwart or deny me?" To wealth, indeed, Marcia rarely gave a conscious thought, although an abundance of it was implied in all her actions and attitudes of mind. It would have seemed to her, at any rate, so strange to be without it, that poverty was not so much an object of compassion as of curiosity; the poverty, for instance, of such a man as Mr. Lester. But behind this ignorance there was no hardness of heart; only a narrow inexperience.
The overture had begun—in a shadowy house. But the stream of the audience was still pouring in from all sides, in spite of the indignant "Hush" of those who wanted not to lose a note of something new and difficult. Marcia sat in the front of the box, conscious of being much looked at, and raising her own opera-glass from time to time, especially to watch the filling up of two rows of chairs on the floor, just below the lower tier of boxes. It was there that Mr. Newbury had told her to look for him. James, who had joined them at the entrance of the theater and was now hanging on the music, observed her once or twice uneasily. Presently he bent over.
"Marcia—you vandal!—listen!"
The girl started and blushed.
"I don't understand the music, James!—it's so strange and barbarous."