It really was quite a buoyant dinner, and Braybrooke began to feel more at ease. He had told them all where they were going afterwards, but had said nothing about Walter’s description of the play. None of them had seen it, but Craven seemed to know all about it, and said it was an entertaining study of life behind the scenes at the opera, with a great singer as protagonist.
“He was drawn, I believe, from a famous baritone.”
During a great part of her life Lady Sellingworth had been an ardent lover of the opera, and she had known many of the leading singers in Paris and London.
“They always seemed to me to be torn by jealousy,” she said, “and often to suffer from the mania of persecution! Really, they are like a race apart.”
And the conversation turned to jealousy. Braybrooke said he had never suffered from it, did not know what it was. And they smiled at him, and told him that then he could have no temperament. Craven declared that he believed almost the whole human race knew the ugly intimacies of jealousy in some form or other.
“And yourself?” said Miss Van Tuyn.
“I!” he said, and looking up saw Lady Sellingworth’s brilliant eyes fixed on him.
“Do you know them?”
“I have felt jealousy certainly, but never yet as I could feel it.”
“What! You are conscious of a great capacity for feeling jealous, a capacity which has never yet had its full fling?” said the girl.