Sefton was in the stalls, attentive, but not applauding. He left all noisy demonstration to the British public. It was enough for him to know that Lisa liked to see him there, tranquil and interested. The highest reward she had ever given him for his devotion was the confession that she missed him when he was absent, and found something wanting in her audience when his stall was empty. For the most part he went as regularly to hear Lisa sing as he took his coffee after dinner. The dinner-party must be something very much out of the common run of dinners which could draw him from his place at the Apollo; and people remarked that for the last two seasons Mr. Sefton was seldom to be met in society until late in the evening.
He went to Mrs. Vansittart’s box between the acts, and made himself particularly agreeable to Sophy, whom he had not seen since her sister’s marriage.
“This is your first season, ain’t it, Miss Marchant?” he said. “What a large reserve fund of enjoyment you must have to spend!”
Sophy was not going to accept compliments upon her ignorance.
“Fernhurst is so near town,” she said. “One sees everybody, and one breathes the town atmosphere.”
“Ah, but you only see people on their rustic side. They wear tailor gowns and talk about foxhunting and sick cottagers. They leave their London intellect in Mayfair, like the table-knives rolled up in mutton fat, to come out sharp and bright next season. You don’t know what we are like in town if you see us only in the country.”
“I don’t find a remarkable difference in you,” said Sophy, pertly. “You always try to be epigrammatic.”
“Oh, I am no one—a poor follower of the fashion of the hour, whatever it may be. How do you like the music?”
“For music to hear and forget I think it is absolutely delightful.”
“There are some numbers which the piano-organs and the fashionable bands won’t allow you to forget—Zuleika’s Song, for instance, and the quartette.”
“I rather hate all but classical music,” replied Sophy, with her fine air, “and I find your famous Signora Vivanti odiously vulgar.”
“Deliciously vulgar, you should have said. Her vulgarity is one of her attractions. To be so pretty, and so graceful, and so clever, and at the same time a peasant to the tips of her fingers—there is the charm.”
“I hate peasants, even when they are as clever as Thomas Carlyle.”
Sefton looked at the pert little face meditatively. She was like Eve, but without Eve’s exceptional loveliness—the loveliness that consists chiefly in delicacy and refinement, an ethereal beauty which makes a woman like a flower. She had Eve’s transparent complexion and changeful colouring. There was the same type, but less beautifully developed. She was quite pretty enough for Sefton to find amusement in teasing her, although all his stronger feelings were given to Signora Vivanti. He called in Charles Street on the following afternoon. It was Mrs. Vansittart’s afternoon at home; and she could not shut her door even against her worst enemy.
Sefton found the usual feminine gossips—mothers and daughters, maiden aunts, and cousins from the country, with fresh-coloured cheeks, and unremarkable faces—the usual sprinkling of well-dressed young men. Among so many people he could secure a few confidential words with Eve, while she poured out the tea, a duty she always performed with her own hands. It was the one thing that reminded her of the old life at Fernhurst, and those jovial teas which had stood in the place of dinner.
She spoke frankly enough of the performance at the Apollo, praised the music and the libretto, declared she had enjoyed it more than any seriocomic opera she had heard during the season; yet Sefton detected a certain constraint when she spoke of Signora Vivanti, which told him that the meeting of the two boats was not forgotten, and that the little scene had left almost as angry a spot upon her memory as that which burnt in his.
“And had you really never seen her on the stage before last night?” he asked.
“Never!”
“How very odd. I think you and Vansittart must have been about the only people at the West End who have not seen Haroun Alraschid—and yet you are playgoers.”
“I was saving the Apollo for my sister,” she answered, perfectly understanding his drift.
She knew that he was trying to give her pain, that he wanted to make her distrust her husband. Lisa’s conduct had impressed him as it had impressed her, and now he was gloating over her jealous agony.
She turned from him to talk to an aristocratic matron, a large and grand-looking woman, who would have looked better in peplum and chiton than in a flimsy pongee confection which she called her “frock.” The matron had heard the word Apollo, and had a good deal to say about Signora Vivanti, whose performance she deprecated as too realistic.
“Dramatic passion is all very well in a classic opera like Gluck’s Orphée,” she said authoritatively, “but that mixture of passion with broad comedy is too bizarre for my taste.”
“My dear Lady Oriphane, that is just what we want nowadays. We all languish for the bizarre. If we travel we want Africa and pygmy blackamoors. If we go to the play we want to be startled by the outrageous, rather that awed by the sublime. The stories we read must have some strange background, or be dotted about with unknown tongues. An author can interest us in a footman if he will only call him a Kitmutghar. With us the worship of the bizarre marks the highest point of culture.”
Mr. Tivett was there, and chimed in at this stage of the conversation with his pretty little ladylike voice.
“It all means the same thing,” he said; “Neo-paganism. We are the children of a decadent age. We have come to the top of the ladder of life—life meaning civilization and
