“No, does she really?” said Tony. “But after all, I call her Lucia when she’s not there. The bell’s gone, by the way: the curtain will be up.”
Adele hurried in.
“Come to my box, Tony,” she said, “after the first act. I haven’t been so interested in anything for years.”
Adele paid no attention whatever to the gloomy play of Tchekov’s. Her whole mind was concentrated on Lucia, and soon she leaned across to Aggie, and whispered:
“I believe it was Pepino who rang her up.”
Aggie knitted her brows for a moment.
“Couldn’t have been,” she said. “He rang her up directly afterward.”
Adele’s face fell. Not being able to think as far ahead as Lucia she didn’t see the answer to that, and relapsed into Lucian meditation, till the moment the curtain fell, when Tony Limpsfield slid into their box.
“I don’t know what the play has been about,” he said, “but I must tell you why she was at Marcia’s last night. Some women chucked Marcia during the afternoon and made her thirteen——”
“Marcia would like that,” said Aggie.