Later on that evening Gavrolles sat alone in his lodgings. He now recollected Sutherland perfectly, and roundly cursed the unlucky chance which had occasioned a second meeting. On reflection, however, he felt confident that the Englishman could do him no serious damage in the eyes of his new acquaintances, even if he attempted to do so, which was doubtful.
When the clock struck eight he lit a cigar and strolled out into the streets. As he walked along, his attention was attracted by a theatre bill in one of the shop windows. One of the names struck him immediately as that of the young actress whose portrait he had seen in the studio of Blanco Serena. He looked at the name of the theatre; it was the Theatre Royal Parthenon. He strolled away in the direction of that building.
On arriving at the theatre, however, he found the doors closed, and discovered that the theatrical season had ended on the previous Saturday.
Strolling carelessly along, he entered one of the smaller theatres in the Strand, a house devoted to opera bouffe. He paid his money and got a seat in the back row of the pit. There, perspiring and half-suffocated, he was listening to the hideous din and watching the insane performance upon the stage, when his attention was attracted by a movement in a box above him, and glancing up he beheld a face he knew.
The face of a woman, young and very beautiful, though trifle pale and sad. She was plainly clad in black satin, with an opera cloak of snowy white, with fringe of down encircling her white neck. No ornaments in her hair, no jewels on her person, and surely she needed neither, for her simple pathetic beauty was better unadorned.
With her was a gentleman, not young, but with the fresh face and manners of a boy. He looked very happy and proud, and gazed less at the stage than at his companion, as, indeed, was natural.
These two were our heroine and her husband, James Forster.
A child might have gathered, from the man’s looks of pleasure and admiration, that Forster loved the beautiful creature by his side. His eyes scarcely left her, he was eager to respond to her slightest look or word. When she talked, he hung upon her speech; and when she was silent he waited for her to speak again.
Gavrolles comprehended the situation directly—almost as rapidly as he recognised Madeline. For the rest of the evening he occupied himself in looking up, with a keen and cat-like gaze. How beautiful she seemed! How much fairer and riper than when he had seen her last, in her wild girlish gaucherie! Pardieu, she was a child then; but now!
As he gazed his thoughts went back to the days when he had seen her first, a giddy schoolgirl, a very will-o’-the-wisp among the decorous young French damsels of the ladies’ seminary. He remembered her wild ways, her odd sayings in schoolgirl’s French, her pretty fits of petulance, her innocent entanglement with him, the ever-seductive Gavrolles—or Belleisle, as he then called himself. He thought of the mad elopement, and the strange days that followed, when the fluttering bird was in his power.