to her; and if I didn't straightway leave my place and rush round the
theatre and up to her box it was because I was fixed to the spot some
moments longer by the simple inability to cease looking at her.

She had been from the first of my seeing her practically motionless,
leaning back in her chair with a kind of thoughtful grace and with her
eyes vaguely directed, as it seemed on me, to one of the boxes on my side
of the house and consequently over my head and out of my sight. The only
movement she made for some time was to finger with an ungloved hand and
as if with the habit of fondness the row of pearls on her neck, which my
glass showed me to be large and splendid. Her diamonds and pearls, in
her solitude, mystified me, making me, as she had had no such brave
jewels in the days of the Hammond Synges, wonder what undreamt-of
improvement had taken place in her fortunes. The ghost of a question
hovered there a moment: could anything so prodigious have happened as
that on her tested and proved amendment Lord Iffield had taken her back?
This could scarce have without my hearing of it; and moreover if she had
become a person of such fashion where was the little court one would
naturally see at her elbow? Her isolation was puzzling, though it could
easily suggest that she was but momentarily alone. If she had come with
Mrs. Meldrum that lady would have taken advantage of the interval to pay
a visit to some other box--doubtless the box at which Flora had just been
looking. Mrs. Meldrum didn't account for the jewels, but the revival of
Flora's beauty accounted for anything. She presently moved her eyes over
the house, and I felt them brush me again like the wings of a dove. I
don't know what quick pleasure flickered into the hope that she would at
last see me. She did see me: she suddenly bent forward to take up the
little double-barrelled ivory glass that rested on the edge of the box
and to all appearance fix me with it. I smiled from my place straight up
at the searching lenses, and after an instant she dropped them and smiled