In the Ladies’ Gallery.
I don’t think she noticed me at all. She seemed to be entirely occupied by looking steadfastly at someone who was seated in the Chamber below. Whoever he was, I envied him to have earned the homage of those glorious, midnight eyes.
As I was leaving the gallery, I asked Wilson, the doorkeeper, who the lady was, the dark, handsome lady in the front row of the gallery. Wilson glanced in the direction I indicated, and answered me directly.
“That, sir,” he said, “is Mrs. John Drury.”
As I went down the stairs, to get to the corridor which leads to the Chamber, I could not help reflecting upon the generous way in which destiny seemed to have made amends to John Drury. Still young, very rich, a famous journalist, a rising politician, and, above all, blessed with a wife of such extraordinary beauty.
“John Drury,” I said to myself, “you are a lucky man, and I hope and believe that you deserve it.”
But the event, which I know you want particularly to hear about, took place some little time after that—a couple of weeks later if I remember rightly.
There were some friends dining with me that night; there were ladies in the party, and I had got one of the pleasantest tables in the ladies’ dining-room for my little group.
It chanced that John Drury and his wife were dining at the next table, and if I had thought her beautiful before in the dim light of the Ladies’ Gallery, I thought her still more radiantly fair in the bright light of the dining-room.