'

'Oh yes, she ought--after all!' the young man returned.

The girl had uttered these words from no desire to say something
flirtatious, but because they simply expressed a part of the judgment
she passed, mentally, on Selina's behaviour. She had a sense of
wrong--of being made light of; for Mrs. Berrington certainly knew that
honourable women didn't (for the appearance of the thing) arrange to
leave their unmarried sister sitting alone, publicly, at the playhouse,
with a couple of young men--the couple that there would be as soon as
Mr. Booker should come back. It displeased her that the people in the
opposite box, the people Selina had joined, should see her exhibited in
this light. She drew the curtain of the box a little, she moved a little
more behind it, and she heard her companion utter a vague appealing,
protecting sigh, which seemed to express his sense (her own corresponded
with it) that the glory of the occasion had somehow suddenly departed.
At the end of some minutes she perceived among Lady Ringrose and her
companions a movement which appeared to denote that Selina had come in.
The two ladies in front turned round--something went on at the back of
the box. 'She's there,' Laura said, indicating the place; but Mrs.
Berrington did not show herself--she remained masked by the others.
Neither was Mr. Booker visible; he had not, seemingly, been persuaded to
remain, and indeed Laura could see that there would not have been room
for him. Mr. Wendover observed, ruefully, that as Mrs. Berrington
evidently could see nothing at all from where she had gone she had
exchanged a very good place for a very bad one. 'I can't imagine--I
can't imagine----' said the girl; but she paused, losing herself in
reflections and wonderments, in conjectures that soon became anxieties.
Suspicion of Selina was now so rooted in her heart that it could make
her unhappy even when it pointed nowhere, and by the end of half an hour
she felt how little her fears had really been lulled since that scene of
dishevelment and contrition in the early dawn.

The opera resumed its course, but Mr. Booker did not come back. The
American singer trilled and warbled, executed remarkable flights, and
there was much applause, every symptom of success; but Laura became more
and more unaware of the music--she had no eyes but for Lady Ringrose and
her friend. She watched them earnestly--she tried to sound with her
glass the curtained dimness behind them. The