At last, at last, he heard the door close! and when Caroline, as the eldest available daughter, came to bring papa his cup of tea, his room was empty.
“Papa has surely gone too,” she said, as she went down again.
“I don’t think it’s very nice of him if he has. Why, he said that if he went we should go too.”
“Papa doesn’t care for operas.”
“Oh! I think he likes them well enough, really—only——”
She stopped herself just in time, keeping back the word, the great word, which might be thought, but never spoken, in the Van Arlen household.
When the family came home that night Van Arlen was even more silent than he had been at dinner, but his silence was a dull apathetic calm. The ladies had enjoyed themselves “awfully”; their flushed cheeks and dancing eyes spoke volumes for the effect of this unwonted gaiety.
“Oh, papa, you must go some time!”
“Was it comic opera?” asked papa.
“Oh, yes! indeed it was—awfully!”