The Major murmured something vague about the difficulty of getting places with less than six weeks' notice, whereupon Christabel told him, with a dignified air, that he need not trouble himself any further.
But a young lady who has plenty of money, and who has been accustomed, while dutiful and obedient to her elders, to have her own way in all essentials, is not so easily satisfied as the guileless Major supposed. As soon as the West-end shops were open next morning, before the jewellers had set out their dazzling wares—those diamond parures and rivières, which are always inviting the casual lounger to step in and buy them—those goodly chased claret jugs, and Queen Anne tea-kettles, and mighty venison dishes, which seem to say, this is an age of luxury, and we are indispensable to a gentleman's table—before those still more attractive shops which deal in hundred-guinea dressing-cases, jasper inkstands, ormolu paper-weights, lapis lazuli blotting-books, and coral powder-boxes—had laid themselves out for the tempter's work—Miss Courtenay and Miss Bridgeman, in their neat morning attire, were tripping from library to library, in quest of a box at the Kaleidoscope for that very evening.
They found what they wanted in Bond Street. Lady Somebody had sent back her box by a footman, just ten minutes ago, on account of Lord Somebody's attack of gout. The librarian could have sold it were it fifty boxes, and at a fabulous price, but he virtuously accepted four guineas, which gave him a premium of only one guinea for his trouble—and Christabel went home rejoicing.
"It will be such fun to show the Major that we are cleverer than he," she said to Jessie.
Miss Bridgeman was thoughtful, and made no reply to this remark. She was pondering the Major's conduct in this small matter, and it seemed to her that he must have some hidden reason for wishing Christabel not to see "Cupid and Psyche." That he, who had so faithfully waited upon all their fancies, taking infinite trouble to give them pleasure, could in this matter be disobliging or indifferent seemed hardly possible. There must be a reason; and yet what reason could there be to taboo a piece which the Major distinctly declared to be correct, and which all the fashionable world went to see? "Perhaps there is something wrong with the drainage of the theatre," Jessie thought, speculating vaguely—a suspicion of typhoid fever, which the Major had shrunk from mentioning, out of respect for feminine nerves.
"Did you ever tell Mr. Hamleigh you wanted to see 'Cupid and Psyche'?" asked Miss Bridgeman at last, sorely exercised in spirit—fearful lest Christabel was incurring some kind of peril by her persistence.
"Yes, I told him; but it was at a time when we had a good many engagements, and I think he forgot all about it. Hardly like Angus, was it, to forget one's wishes, when he is generally so eager to anticipate them?"
"A strange coincidence!" thought Jessie. Mr. Hamleigh and the Major had been unanimous in their neglect of this particular fancy of Christabel's.
At luncheon Miss Courtenay told her aunt the whole story—how Major Bree had been most disobliging, and how she had circumvented him.
"And my revenge will be to make him sit out 'Cupid and Psyche' for the second time," she said, lightly, "for he must be our escort. You will go, of course, dearest, to please me?"