It was a profanation without parallel, and his face blazed like a coal.
The play was now nearly at an end, and Somerset sat on, feeling what he could not express.

More than ever was he assured that there had been collusion between the two artillery officers to bring about this end.
That he should have been the unhappy man to design those picturesque dresses in which his rival so audaciously played the lover to his, Somerset's, mistress, was an added point to the satire.

He could hardly go so far as to assume that Paula was a consenting party to this startling interlude; but her otherwise unaccountable wish that his own love should be clandestinely shown lent immense force to a doubt of her sincerity.

The ghastly thought that she had merely been keeping him on, like a pet spaniel, to amuse her leisure moments till she should have found appropriate opportunity for an open engagement with some one else, trusting to his sense of chivalry to keep secret their little episode, filled him with a grim heat.
IX.
At the back of the room the applause had been loud at the moment of the kiss, real or counterfeit.

The cause was partly owing to an exceptional circumstance which had occurred in that quarter early in the play.
The people had all seated themselves, and the first act had begun, when the tapestry that screened the door was lifted gently and a figure appeared in the opening.