The mistake he had made had a silencing effect upon Stacy too. He had no wish that the history of that garment should be produced, and when his wife was about to speak, silenced her at once.
"My dear Harriet," he said, "how often have I told you that talking at a theater or the operer is awfully vulgar. I wonder you can persist in it, and Mr. Hepworth by. Just listen to that music! Haven't you no taste? If you haven't, just take a look around the boxes. That young feller there is the Prince of Wales."
Mrs. Stacy took a mother-of-pearl opera glass from her lap, and obediently turned it upon the royal box.
Before the performance was over, and while Hepworth was drawn back, in spite of himself, to the most painful scenes of his life, an usher came down the nearest passage, and put a little twisted note into his hand. It was from Olympia, inviting him to supper the next evening.
Hepworth crushed the pretty missive in his hand, while he turned to send a verbal refusal, but the usher had withdrawn, and he had no other way of sending a reply that night.
The opera was at its close now, and Hepworth left the house, irritated and restless. Could he find no place in which this miserable past would not haunt him? He had hardly made his way through the crowd when his arm was seized, and Stacy almost wheeled him around on the pavement.
"My dear sir, this way. Mrs. Stacy is already in the carriage. Of course we would not ride and let you go afoot. Have been a poor man myself once—needn't deny that to you. Know what it is to keep up a show without capital. But no old friend of mine shall go afoot while I have the wherewith to pay for a carriage, and an empty seat in it. Shall set in the back seat with Mrs. Stacy, upon my soul you shall, and that's an honor I don't offer to every man. Now just tell me where you are putting up."
Hepworth laughed, in spite of his annoyance. The patronizing fussiness of the ex-alderman struck a keen sense of the ridiculous, which was strong in his character.
"If you insist," he said. "But you are too generous."
"Not at all, not at all. When Alderman Stacy does a thing, he does it handsomely. This way, this way!"