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Updated: June 30, 2025
They discovered that he was going to see her in the evening; they envied him, they described the play to him, they dwelt in superlatives on the crowded state of the theatre and on the plaudits which greeted Miss Bretherton's first appearance in the ballroom scene in the first act, and they allowed themselves being aesthetic damsels robed in sober greenish-grays a gentle lament over the somewhat violent colouring of one of the actress's costumes, while all the time keeping their eyes furtively fixed on the gleaming animated profile and graceful shoulders over which, in the entrance of the second drawing-room, the Minister's gray head was bending.
Forbes was making a low bow to the beauty, and immediately afterwards Kendal saw his fine gray head and stooping shoulders disappear into the next room, side by side with Miss Bretherton's erect and graceful figure.
I feel myself as much of a brute as ever, but I see that the only thing I can do is to hold my tongue about it. To which Kendal heartily agreed. A few days afterwards the newspapers gave a prominent place to reports of Miss Bretherton's farewell performance. It had been a great social event. Half the distinguished people in London were present, led by royalty.
But there is extravagance in it, as there is in all the work of that time, and in Isabel Bretherton's hands a great deal of it would be grotesque: nothing would save it but her reputation and the get-up, and that would be too great a shame. No, no; it will not do to have the real thing swamped by all sorts of irrelevant considerations in this way.
"Ha!" said Wallace, who is a bird-lover, "a truce to Balzac, and let us watch those nut-hatches! Miss Bretherton's quite right to prefer them to French novels." "French novels!" she said, withdrawing her eyes from the branch above her, and frowning a little at Wallace as she spoke. "Please don't expect me to talk about them I know nothing about them I have never wished to."
She must come to depend more and more on the physical charm, and on that only. The whole pressure of her success is and will be that way. Miss Bretherton's inadequacy, indeed, became more and more visible as the play was gradually and finely worked up to its climax in the last act.
But Isabel Bretherton's frank curiosity, her kindling eyes and sweet parted lips, and that strain of romance in her which made her so quickly responsive to anything which touched her imagination, were not easy to resist. She was delightful to his eye and sense, and he was as conscious as he had ever been of her delicate personal charm.
I would make a serious purpose of it. She should find me a friend worth having. His thoughts wandered on a while in this direction. It was pleasant to see himself in the future as Miss Bretherton's philosopher and friend, but in the end the sense of reality gained upon his dreams. 'I am a fool! he said to himself resolutely at last, 'and I may as well go to bed and put her out of my mind.
The movements of the jealous beauty and of her faithless lover were invested throughout with sufficient dramatic meaning to keep up the thread of the play. But it was not the dramatic aspect of the scene for which the audience cared, it was simply for the display which it made possible of Isabel Bretherton's youth and grace and loveliness.
'M. de Châteauvieux has devoted himself to her; it is a pretty sight to see them together. Your sister and she, too, are inseparable, and Madame de Châteauvieux's quiet, equable refinement makes a good contrast to Miss Bretherton's mobility. She will never lose the imprint of her friendship with these two people; it was a happy thought which led you to bring them together.
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