[CHAPTER IV]
When that night, during the interval between the first and second acts of the opera, the door of the box opened and Sidney made his appearance, Mrs. Vanderstein greeted him with a beaming smile and the most sincere pleasure.
“How nice to see you, dear Joe,” she said. “I didn’t know you were in London.”
“I only came up from York last night,” said her nephew, “or I should have been to see you before. The Garringdons asked me to their box, which is more or less under this, so I couldn’t see if you were here, but I thought you would be.”
He sat down and began to talk about his doings and to ask questions about theirs, Mrs. Vanderstein looking at him meanwhile with a feeling of gratification at the decorative effect on her box of this good looking youth. She hoped the audience, or at least some members of it, had noticed his entrance, and she thought to herself that even inconvenient nephews had their uses.
Joe Sidney was twenty-five years of age and his father’s son. The late Mr. Sidney had been a very tall, fair individual, and Joe resembled him, showing the merest trace of the Jew in the droop of his nose, which, however, was not very marked. His eyes too, perhaps—but why pick to pieces a young man who really was, taken altogether, a very fine specimen of his kind? Though he had not, or scarcely had, inherited the appearance of his mother’s race, he showed much of its sympathy with art and music; and his intelligence was equalled by his prepossessing manner, which had made him a favourite since his boyhood with nearly all with whom he came in contact, and, combined with his wealth, rendered him extremely popular in the cavalry regiment in which he was a subaltern. He knew a great many smart people whose acquaintance Mrs. Vanderstein would have given her ears to make, and from time to time he invited her to meet one or two of them at a restaurant dinner or theatre, quite unconscious of the pleasure he was giving; for the very intensity of her longing made Mrs. Vanderstein shy of letting this superior young relative guess at it, and Barbara had never hinted to him at the weakness of his uncle’s widow.
Poor Mrs. Vanderstein! One pities her when one reflects that if the good Moses had survived a few years, till the advent of a Radical government which was extremely short of sympathisers in the Upper House, she might have lived to hear him called “My Lord,” and have answered with beating heart to the delicious salutation of “My Lady.”
She seized the opportunity afforded by Sidney’s presence now to gather information about the occupants of the boxes facing them. Did Joe see anyone he knew? Of course she knew by sight every one in the Royal box, except that man behind the Queen. Who was that? Sidney thought it was the Italian ambassador. What a distinguished looking man! And in the next box? Sidney didn’t know. And the one beyond that? He didn’t know either. Mrs. Vanderstein was disappointed in him. Well, who did he know? Couldn’t he tell her anyone?