"I must really congratulate you, Mrs. Heath. I don't know your husband unfortunately, but—"
"Here he is!" said Charmian.
At this moment Claude came toward them, holding himself, she thought, unusually upright, almost like a man who has been put through too much drill. With a determined manner, and smiling, he came up to them.
"I feel almost ashamed to have kept you here to this hour," he said to Mrs. Shiffney. "But really for a rehearsal it didn't go so badly, did it?"
"Wonderfully well we thought. Mr. Ramer wants to congratulate you."
She introduced the two men to one another.
"Yes, indeed!" said Ramer. "It's a most interesting work—most interesting." He laid a heavy emphasis on the repeated words, and glanced sideways at Mrs. Shiffney, whose lips were fixed in a smile. "And how admirably put on!"
He ran on for several minutes with great self-possession.
"Miss Mardon is quite wonderful!" said Mrs. Shiffney, when he stopped.
And she talked rapidly for some minutes, touching on various points in the opera with a great deal of deftness.