She was a stout, uncertain nonentity, whose chief endeavours in her narrow world were to seem as slim as she would like to be and as certain of her social position as was proper for a woman of moderate antecedents, who had married a membership in Manhattan's three most difficult clubs. What, of course, she had been thinking was not at all about Stainton's bravery: it was, rather, that Stainton had become quite rich quite romantically, and that he was not the rough diamond which tradition demanded.
Stainton took all this for granted and, knowing not what to say in reply, bowed and said nothing.
"Glad to know you," was what Newberry said: and he presently added: "The cast's in rotten voice to-night. Sit down."
Newberry, the sleek, weary-eyed elderly man, whom Stainton had barely noticed in his first survey of the box, was the membership in New York's three most difficult clubs. He had inherited money without brains, had sought to adjust matters by marrying brains without money, and had been intellectually disappointed.
To him in turn Stainton bowed in silence. His eyes were on the girl, and the girl's slim back was set resolutely toward him.
There was an awkward pause. Nobody seemed to remember Muriel. At length Holt, still in terror, blundered forward.
The girl turned. The glory of her warm eyes brushed Stainton's face and passed it.
"I am Miss Stannard," she said. "It is good of you to join us. Do sit down, Mr. Stainton."
Stainton sat down. He sat down directly behind her, and at last, politely unencouraging though she at first managed to remain, he succeeded in gaining some sort of conversational opening.
What did he say there, for the early ten minutes of their talk? He was unable at any later date to recall one word of it. Everything, he was sure, that was clumsy. As a matter of fact, his own speech was probably by no means so uncouth as his torturing fancy declared it, hers by no means so brilliant as his memory, which retained no souvenirs, insisted. More likely than not, their talk fulfilled the requirements of convention. Convention requires the commonplace.
Nobody paid any but sporadic attention to the opera. To the left of the girl and Stainton, Mrs. Newberry and her husband, a Dido matched to a Don Juan, exchanged low monosyllables with each other and darting exchanges of talk, like rallies at badminton, with Holt. Sometimes they were ill-mannered enough to converse in whispers, near Stainton's shoulder, but mostly Mrs. Newberry was laboriously conventional, out of a constant fear of being adjudged plebeian, and now and again, to Stainton's huge disgust, she would lean to confer a word on her niece and her niece's companion.