"And just beyond," Mrs. Newberry ran on, "in the American beauty satin veiled in ninon—there: her waist is embroidered with beads and rows of silver lace; you can't see very well in this light."
"Girl with the fine nose," Preston elucidated.
"I see."
"That's Mrs. Billy Merton. You must have heard of her. She divorced Clem Davis last month and married Billy the next day."
She rattled on for some time, ceasing her chatter only for brief pauses, at intervals unconsciously regulated by her long acquaintance with the opera and its finer moments. The strains of the beautiful music seemed to Stainton to be a loveliness unworthily draping, on the stage, the story of a base man's perfidy; and the pleasant indiscretions of the fashionable opera-gowns to be clothing, in the audience, none but women that had already stripped their souls in one or other of the scandalous rituals imposed by modern law for the dissolution of the most private of relationships.
He made but brief answers, and he was unfeignedly relieved when his poor responsiveness forced Mrs. Newberry to retreat and left him free again with Muriel. He looked frank admiration at her level brows, her dark eyes, and her full lips. Here, he assured himself, was innocence: her face was her young soul made visible.
Perhaps, as she pretended, it was his distress at her aunt's garrulity; for it must have been evident to her. Perhaps it was the dropped hint of his adventurous life; for women are all Desdemonas at heart. Perhaps it was only his patent worship of her beauty; since we are all assailable through this sort of compliment to whatever of our charms we are least responsible for. Perhaps it was all or none of these things. In any case, as Mrs. Newberry retired to a continuation of her gossip with Holt, broken only by the terser remarks of Newberry, Muriel bent a little closer to Stainton.
"You don't care a bit about such things, do you?" she enquired.
Her tone was lower than when she had last spoken. It was low enough to draw the curtain of confidence between them and their companions, with that subtle quality that takes account of but one listener.
Stainton's pulses leaped.