Beyond the Rocks

Meanwhile, Hector reached the opera, and made his way to the omnibus box

where he had his seat.

He felt he could not stand Morella Winmarleigh just yet. The second act

of "Faust" was almost over, and with his glass he swept the rows of

boxes in vain to find Theodora. He sat a few minutes, but restlessness

seized him. He must go to the other side and ascertain if she could be

discovered from there. Morella Winmarleigh's box commanded a good view

for this purpose, so after all he would face her.

He looked up at her opposite. She sat there with his mother, and she

seemed more thoroughly wholesomely unattractive than ever to him.

He hated that shade of turquoise blue she was so fond of, and those

unmeaning bits and bows she had stuck about. She was a large young woman

with a stolid English fairness.

Her hair had the flaxen ends and sandy roots one so often sees in those

women whose locks have been golden as children. It was a thin, dank kind

of hair, too, with no glints anywhere. Her eyes were blue and large and

meaningless and rather prominent, and her lightish eyelashes seemed to

give no shade to them.

Morella's orbs just looked out at you like the bow-windows of a sea-side

villa--staring and commonplace. Her features were regular, and her

complexion, if somewhat all too red, was fresh withal; so that,

possessing an income of many thousands, she passed for a beauty of

exceptional merit.

She had a good maid who used her fingers dexterously, and did what she

could with a mistress devoid of all sense of form or color.

Miss Winmarleigh went to the opera regularly and sat solidly through it.

The music said nothing to her, but it was the right place for her to be,

and she could talk to her friends before going on to the numerous balls

she attended.

If she loved anything in the world she loved Hector Bracondale, but her

feelings gave her no anxieties. He would certainly marry her presently,

the affair would be so suitable to all parties; meanwhile, there was

plenty of time, and all was in order. The perfect method of her

account-books, in which the last sixpence she spent in the day was duly

entered, translated itself to her life. Method and order were its

watchwords; and if the people who knew her intimately--such as her

chaperon, Mrs. Herrick, and her maid, Gibson--thought her mean, she was

not aware of their opinion, and went her way in solid rejoicing.

Lady Bracondale was really attached to her. Morella's decorum, her

absence of all daring thought in conversation, pleased her so. She had

none of that feeling when with Miss Winmarleigh she suffered in the

company of her daughter Anne, who said things so often she did not quite

understand, yet which she dimly felt might have two meanings, and one of

them a meaning she most probably would disapprove of.