“It is an operatic version of a story of the younger Dumas,” explained Walter, with an uncomfortable sense of treading on dangerous ground. “The story is that of a beautiful woman who has lived an evil life, and is reformed through her affection for a young Frenchman. His friends think he is degrading himself by offering to marry her, and to cure him she pretends to be false and wicked. In the end, she dies in his arms, broken-hearted. It is a very touching subject, I think, though some people consider it immoral.”
Here the matron broke in with quiet severity.
“I wonder yon woman—Patti, you call her—doesn’t think shame to appear in such dresses. One of them was scarcely decent, and I was almost ashamed to look at her—the creature!”
“But her singing, mother, her singing; was it not divine?”
“It was meeddling loud; but I’ve heard far finer in the kirk. Edith, my bairn, you’re tired, I’m thinking. We’ll just read a chapter, and get to bed.”
So the chapter was read, and the ladies retired, while Walter walked off to his studio to have a quiet pipe. He was too used to his mother’s peculiarities to be much surprised at the failure of the evening’s entertainment; but he felt really amazed that Edith had not been more impressed.
The next morning, when they met at breakfast, Edith astonished both her aunt and cousin by expressing her wish to return to Omberley as soon as possible.
“Go away already!” cried the young man. ‘“Why, you’ve hardly been here a week, and you’ve seen nothing of town, and we’ve all the picture-galleries to visit yet.”
“And you have not heard Mr. Mactavish discoorse,” cried his mother. “No, no; you must bide awhile.”
But Edith shook her head, and they saw her mind was made up.