While the cheery little meal was being discussed, a servant brought in a coroneted envelope for the hostess, which being opened, contained a box for Covent Garden, where there was an early season of Italian Opera.
“For to-night,” said Mrs. Pembroke. And then she read aloud from the letter, “‘I find at the last moment that I can’t use my box. Do go if you are free. The opera is Faust, with a new “Margherita.”’ That’s rather a pity,” sighed the lady, folding up the letter.
“Why a pity?” asked Vansittart. “Why shouldn’t you go? I dare say your box will hold me as well as Tom, so you need have no conscientious scruples on the ground of inhospitality.”
“Oh, there will be plenty of room. It is Lady Davenant’s box, on the grand tier. But Tom asked you for a quiet evening, a long talk and smoke, and perhaps an adjournment to the Turf for a rubber. I’m afraid you’ll be dreadfully bored if I take you to the opera instead.”
“Pray don’t think so badly of me. If it were Wagner perhaps I might be less sure of myself. There are bits I enjoy in his operas, but I confess myself a tyro in that advanced school. Gounod’s Faust I adore. We shall be in time for the Kermess scene, and the new Gretchen. Pray let us be off.”
A cab was sent for, and the trio packed themselves into it, Mrs. Pembroke sparkling with pleasure. She was passionately fond of music, and she had been looking forward to a solitary evening by the drawing-room fire, while her husband and his friend sat smoking and prosing together in the barrister’s ground-floor den.
The house was thin, this premature opera season not having been a marked success. Lady Davenant’s box was near the proscenium, a spacious box, which would have accommodated six people as easily as three. Vansittart sat in the middle, between his host and hostess. Tom Pembroke, who was no music lover, dozed in the shadow of the curtain, agreeably lulled by melodies which were pleasant from their familiarity.
The cast was not strong, but the Margherita was very young, rather pretty, and sang well. Vansittart and Mrs. Pembroke were both interested.
It was near the close of the Kermess scene that the lady asked her companion, “Do you ever look at the chorus? Such poor old things, some of them! I can’t help thinking how weary they must be of singing the same music season after season, and tramping in and out of the same scenes—banquets where there is nothing to eat, too, and then going home to bread and cheese.”