“Your wedding dress,” said Mrs. Star, reflectively. “I think I heard you had married a naturalist—prehistoric bones, is it not? Very interesting subject—so inspiring. Milliken”—to the footman, who opened the door on their arrival at the opera house—“you may keep the carriage here. I shall not be more than half an hour.”
Half an hour for the enjoyment of a pleasure that cost her, yearly, a moderate fortune!
On their way through the foyer to the box, Deena ventured to disclaim for her husband a peculiar interest in fossils.
“My husband is a botanist,” she began, and then desisted when she saw her companion’s attention was barely held by a desire to be civil.
“Ah, indeed!” Mrs. Star vaguely responded. “Delightful topic. I went into it myself quite extensively when I was a girl.”
Deena was not often malicious, but she couldn’t help wishing Simeon could have stood by to hear this announcement of a girlish mastery of his life’s work. She tried to think in what dry words he would have rebuked the levity, but before she could arrange a phrase quite in character, they were in the front of the box, and in the obscurity some one took her hand, and Stephen French’s voice murmured:
“What a piece of luck that I should see you to-night! I have only been in town a few hours, and obeyed my aunt’s summons to the opera as a means of keeping myself from Ben’s house till the morning. You can’t think how eager I have been to see you again, Mrs. Ponsonby.”
There was a strange break in his voice, as if he were trying to restrain the rush of happiness.
All the six mighty artists who made the opera the marvel it was were combining their voices in the closing sextet of the fourth act, and Deena, thrilled by the loveliness of the music and, perhaps, by the surprise of French’s presence, felt she was trembling with excitement.
“Fancy meeting you here!” she kept repeating, the stupid phrase concealing the great joy that was puzzling her conscience.