She sat in the box with Mrs. Bates a good part of the
evening, and bowed a great many times to a great many gentlemen, young
and old, whom she had never seen before and never expected to see again,
and whose names, therefore, she made no effort to secure. She talked with
two or three with whom it seemed possible and profitable to talk, and
learned their names afterwards.
Mr. Bates himself spent very little time in his wife's box. He lounged on
one of the springy sofas in the narrow lobby behind, or leaned over the
burnished barriers of other boxes to talk murmurously with other magnates
about the Stock Exchange or the volume of traffic. He was a grave and
somewhat inexpressive person, with reticent eyes and snow-white bunches
of side-whiskers, and a rather cold and impassive manner. His wife
followed his peregrinations with an indulgent eye.
"Poor Granger," she said to Jane; "this thing tires him more and more
every year. So I give him plenty of leeway. See him now." She looked over
her shoulder, where, twenty feet away, her husband was talking across the
bronze bar with another elderly man in the adjoining box.
"It's a conference," she went on--"it's a deal; it's on my account--he
told me so himself. If it goes through it means another string to this
necklace."
She suddenly became quite smileless and rigid. "Why, what's the matter?"
asked Jane.
Mrs. Bates presently relaxed. "That woman who just passed," she
explained; "she was wondering if these diamonds weren't imitations, and
the real ones in the safety vaults down-town.
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