He hadn’t been in love with her—there never was anything of that sort between them. There might have been of course, but as happened there wasn’t. Headway would have been then the successor of Beck; perhaps there had been others between. She was in no sort of “society”; she only had a local reputation (“the well-known Texan belle,” the newspapers called her—the other editors, to whom she wasn’t married), though indeed in that spacious civilisation the locality was large. She knew nothing of the East and to the best of his belief at that period had never seen New York. Various things might have happened in those six years, however; no doubt she had “come up.” The West was sending us everything (Littlemore spoke as a New Yorker); no doubt it would send us at last our brilliant women. The well-known Texan belle used to look quite over the head of New York; even in those days she thought and talked of Paris, which there was no prospect of her knowing: that was the way she had got on in New Mexico. She had had her ambition, her presentiments; she had known she was meant for better things. Even at San Pablo she had prefigured her member of Parliament; every now and then a wandering Englishman came within her range. They weren’t all Sir Arthurs, like her present acquisition, but they were usually a change from the editors. What she was doing with her present acquisition Littlemore was curious to see. She was certainly—if he had any capacity for that state of mind, which was not too apparent—making the gentleman happy. She looked very splendid; Headway had probably made a “pile,” an achievement not to be imputed to any of the others. She didn’t accept money—he was sure she didn’t accept money. With all of which, on their way back to their seats, Littlemore, whose tone had been humorous, but with that strain of the pensive which is inseparable from retrospect, suddenly burst into audible laughter. “The modelling of statues and the works of Voltaire!” he broke out, recurring to two or three things she had said. “It’s touching to hear her attempt those flights, for in New Mexico she knew nothing about modelling.” “She didn’t strike me as affected,” Waterville demurred, feeling a vague impulse to view her in becoming lights. “Oh no; she’s only—as she says—fearfully changed.” They were in their places before the play went on again, and they both gave another glance at Mrs. Headway’s box. She now was leaning back behind the slow movements of her fan and evidently watching Littlemore as if she had waited to see him come in. Sir Arthur Demesne sat beside her, rather gloomily resting a round pink chin upon a high stiff collar; neither of them seemed to speak. “Are you sure she makes him happy?” Waterville asked. “Yes—that’s the way those people show it.” “But does she go about alone with him at that rate? Where’s her husband?” “I suppose she has divorced him.”