"May I offer my congratulations?" Mr. Hunt's face, if not handsome, was pleasant. His voice betrayed a past of public school and college. Joan instinctively liked him. After a little small talk and apologies on his part for haste--duty called him to be at his post at the raising of the curtain upon the new drama--he departed, volunteering to pay their box a visit between the acts.
"He is a capital good fellow, dearest," said Vansittart, asking her permission to smoke as the waiter brought their coffee. "But you must know that, for I would not otherwise have introduced him to you."
"He looks it," said Joan warmly.
"I suppose you know who that couple are?" asked Mr. Hunt, as he rejoined his friend.
"Lord Vansittart, wasn't it? What a beautiful girl! But if all is true they say, what an unfortunate creature!"
"Why, Vansittart is one of the best fellows I know!" exclaimed Clement Hunt; and he spent the next ten minutes in indignantly endeavouring to convince his friend that if club gossip were not invariably entirely false, in this case any rumour of a previous marriage on Vansittart's part was an absolute and odious fabrication.
Meanwhile, Vansittart had carefully cloaked his beloved in her quiet, if costly, theatre wrap, and, after royally tipping the waiter, had escorted her, followed by interested glances, down the stairs to the entrance. A hansom speedily conveyed them to the theatre. They were just settled in the box, Joan was glancing round the house through her opera glass, when the orchestra began the overture. At first, the music merely aroused a dormant, unpleasant, shamed sensation. Then, as it struck up a well-known air from "Carmen," she inwardly shrank, her whole being, heart included, indeed seemed to halt, as if paralyzed with reminiscent horror.
It was the air Victor had whistled under her window at night when he was secretly courting her, and she had not heard it since.
What demon was persecuting her? Not only that air sent arrows of pain into her very soul, but the subsequent melodies drove them home to the core. It was as if a malignant fiend had picked out and strung together the favourite tunes the dead man had whistled and sung during the stolen meetings of their clandestine love affair, to clamour them in her ears when she was powerless to escape. To rush away before the curtain rose would be to betray some extraordinary emotion; yet she had to fight the desire to do so. It took her whole little strength to force herself to remain seated in the box and endure the consequent performance.
By the time the curtain rose she was the conqueror. She had held the lorgnette to her eyes, and pretended to scan the audience while that brief mental battle was raging, lest, removing it, her lover should notice her agitation. Fortunately, even as the curtain gave place to a woodland scene, the auditorium was darkened.