“Perhaps she isn’t looking at any one,” thought Quentin.
On the stage, they were spilling an ocean of tears: the priest, with his snow-white hair, saying, “My children” everywhere he went, was busy making his fellows happy.
The Countess cast an absent-minded glance at the stage, picked up her glasses, and took aim.
“It’s the Governor,” said Quentin.
The woman’s glasses were lowered a bit, and he had to correct himself.
“It’s the toreador,” he remarked.
After many vacillations, Quentin realized that the Countess was playing with two stacks of cards, and was dividing her glances between the First Authority of the province, and the young toreador, so recently arrived in cultured society from a butcher shop in the district of El Matadero.
The Governor, very serious, very much be-gloved, looked at the woman; the little toreador, with his foot on the parquette rail, preened himself and smiled, showing the white teeth of a healthy animal.
At the beginning of the last act, the toreador, who had been concealed behind the curtains of the parquette, appeared with a square piece of paper that looked like a note in his hand; he showed it cautiously, and twisted it about his fingers.
Presently the woman, looking at the stage, nodded her head in the affirmative.