'What did I say to annoy her,' thinks Paul, and then seizing the first opportunity he makes for the door, but his sister stops him on the threshold.
'Oh, Paul, do be a dear,' she says, 'and get some places for us for the play, I don't care what, only let it be somewhere proper, for Philippa's sake not mine, get them for to-morrow night, and come and dine here beforehand.'
'All right,' he answers, 'I shall probably look in during the morning. Ta ta.'
Mabel Seaton is a great favourite. She is not what one would call pretty, but she possesses a bright, cheery face, which is reflected in miniature in her son Teddy, who is as his uncle says rather the 'enfant terrible!' but do not say so before his mother, or her wrath would be dire. Her husband George is really the only person who dares to interfere concerning the conduct of that small personage.
Philippa, who up till now has lived with an aunt in Switzerland, having reached the age of eighteen, has come over to England to be presented and enter into the vortex of London society. So it is to quite another world she has come, and she wonders if she will be happy. Life is such a strange thing, so many beginnings and so few endings.
But the theatre is hardly the place for melancholy meditations, and she is sitting in the stalls of the L——. Mabel on one side, Paul Ponsonby on the other; the latter has become deeply interested in Philippa, and wonders what sort of a woman she will become—a coquette, a flirt? He glances at her fair, childish face and sighs. The curtain goes up, but he does not see the scene before him; no, 'tis a woman's face he seems to see, a pale face, with large brown eyes that are fixed on him with a look of—pshaw! what had love to do with her. Time had been when love for that woman had filled his whole being, but there came a day when he tried to make himself hate her, and he did not succeed. Heigh ho!
'Mr Ponsonby,' Philippa is saying to him, 'do look at that dear little baby.'
With a start he comes back from the reverie into which he had sunk and answers at random 'Yes, she always acts perfectly—'
Philippa looks at him in astonishment, how could that child always act perfectly when it couldn't be more than three, but she says nothing and watches with interest the play. It is a sad piece of a woman wronged, the acting is splendid and more than once Miss Seaton feels a lump in her throat, but it is over at length and the curtain falls for the last time.
'Did you like it?' asks Ponsonby, helping her on with her cloak.