Claude was sitting a little way off talking to Susan Fleet. Mrs. Shiffney had "managed" this. She wanted to feel how things were through the woman. Then perhaps she would tackle the man. At lunch it had seemed to her as if success were in the air. Had she always been mistaken in her judgment of Claude Heath! Had Charmian seen more clearly and farther than she had? She felt more interested in Charmian than she had ever felt before, and disliked her, in consequence, much more than formerly. How Charmian would triumph if the Heath opera were a success! How unbearable she would be! In fancy Mrs. Shiffney saw Charmian enthroned, and "giving herself" a thousand airs. Mrs. Shiffney had never forgiven Charmian for taking possession of Claude. She did not hate her for that. Charmian had only got in the way of a whim. But Mrs. Shiffney disliked those who got in the way of her whims, and resented their conduct, as the spoilt child resents the sudden removal of a toy. Without hating Charmian she dearly wished for the failure of the great enterprise, in which she knew Charmian's whole heart and soul were involved. And she wished it the more on account of the change in Claude Heath. In his intensity, his vivacity, his resolution, she was conscious of fascination. He puzzled her. "There really is a great deal in him," she said to herself. And she wished that some of that "great deal" could be hers. As it could not be hers, unless her judgment of a man, not happily come to, and now almost angrily accepted, was at fault, she wished to punish. She could not help this. But she did not desire to help it.
Mrs. Shiffney separated from the Heaths that day without speaking of the "libretto-scandal," as the papers now called the invention of Madame Sennier. They parted apparently on cordial terms. And Mrs. Shiffney's last words were:
"I'm coming to see you one day in your eyrie at the Saint Regis. I take no sides where art is in question, and I want both the operas to be brilliant successes."
She had said not a word about the rehearsals at the New Era Opera House.
Charmian was almost disappointed by her silence. She had turned over and over in her mind Claude's words about the verdict in advance. She continued to dwell upon them mentally after the meeting with Mrs. Shiffney. By degrees she became almost obsessed by the idea of Mrs. Shiffney as arbiter of Claude's destiny and hers.
Mrs. Shiffney's position had always fascinated Charmian, because it was the position she would have loved to occupy. Even in her dislike, her complete distrust of Mrs. Shiffney, Charmian was attracted by her. Now she longed with increasing intensity to use Mrs. Shiffney as a test.
Rehearsals of Claude's opera were being hurried on. Crayford was determined to produce his novelty before the Metropolitan crowd produced theirs.
"They've fixed the first," he said. "Then it's up to us to be ready by the twenty-eighth, and that's all there is to it. We'll get time enough to die all right afterward. But there aren't got to be no dying nor quitting now. We've fixed the locusts, and now we'll start in to fix all the rest of the cut-out."
He had begun to call Claude's opera "the cut-out" because he said it was certain to cut out Sennier's work. The rumors about the weakness of Sennier's libretto had put the finishing touch to his pride and enthusiasm. Thenceforth he set no bounds to his expectations.
"We've got a certainty!" he said. "And they know it."