Just then Mrs. Vanderburgh, who hadn't heard any more of the opera than could fit itself into her lively plans for the campaign she laid out to accomplish in siege of Tom Selwyn, pushed and elbowed herself along. "Of course the earl isn't here—and the boy is alone, and dreadfully taken with Jasper King, so I can manage him. And once getting him, I'll soon have the earl to recognise me as a relation." Then, oh! visions of the golden dream of bliss when she could visit such titled kin in Old England, and report it all when at home in New York, filled her head. And with her mind eaten up with it, she pushed rudely by a plain, somewhat dowdy-looking woman who obstructed her way.
The woman raised a quiet, yet protesting face; but Mrs. Vanderburgh, related to an earl, surveyed her haughtily, and pressed on.
"Excuse me," said the plain-looking woman, "but it is impossible for me to move; the people are coming out this way, Madam, and—"
"And I must get by," answered Mrs. Vanderburgh, interrupting, and wriggling past as well as she could. But the lace on her flowing sleeve catching on the umbrella handle of a stout German coming the other way, she tore it half across. A dark flush of anger rushed over her face, and she vented all her spite on the plain-looking person in her path. "If you had moved, this wouldn't have happened!" she exclaimed.
"It was impossible for me to do so," replied the woman, just as quietly as ever. Just then Tom Selwyn rushed up: "Mother!" to the plain-looking woman; "well, we did get separated! Oh!" and seeing her companion he plunged back.
Fanny Vanderburgh, well in the rear, a party of young German girls impeding the way, felt her mother's grasp, and looked around.
"Oh, you've torn your lace sleeve!" she exclaimed, supposing the black looks referred to that accident.
"Torn my sleeve!" echoed her mother, irately, "that's a trifle," while Fanny stared in surprise, knowing, by past experience, that much lesser accidents had made black days for her; "I'm the unluckiest person alive. And think of all the money your father has given me to spend, and it won't do any good. Fanny, I'm going straight back to Paris, as quickly as possible."
"Why, I'm having a good time now," said Fanny, just beginning to enjoy herself. "Polly Pepper is real nice to me. I don't want to go home a bit." All this as they slowly filed out in the throng.
"Well, you're going; and, oh, those Peppers and those Kings, I'm sick to death of their names," muttered her mother, frowning on her.