“Well, yes. It’s incredible how a year or so changes all the people and places in Paris. I have scarcely seen one of the faces that used to be familiar in the Bois two winters ago.”
“Paris isn’t as bad as London for change,” Silverlake remarks. “In town there’s a lot of cads who suddenly appear—no one knows whence—make a great flare up with carriages, horses, opera boxes, powdered footmen, and as suddenly disappear, goodness knows where, and sink into utter oblivion. Cads who speculate, you know, make fortunes by some species of swindling, and then lose them again.”
“People who are not cads manage to get through their money pretty well,” drawls Shropshire.
At which Delaval laughs.
“Does it hit home, Silverlake?”
“Well, it’s a consolation he and I are in the same coach!”
And then the three men enter a box, the next but one to the stage.
The Alcazar is crowded to suffocation, there is no moving in the body of the house, where they sit at the little tables smoking and drinking, and as Delaval looks round, he says—
“What on earth do the people flock here for like this?”
“For Marguerite Ange. Her singing has made this place an unheard of success, you know.”