concern themselves with theatrical affairs.  Among those which might be said to be within a certain literary and artistic circumference, people were able to give definite grounds for the public interest.  The play, it was said, was an unusually good one, and the progress of the rehearsals had let loose a flood of rumours to the effect that Miss Bretherton’s acting in it would be a great surprise to the public.  Further, from the intellectual centre of things, it was only known that the famous beauty had returned to the scene of her triumphs; and that now, as in the season, one of the first articles of the social decalogue laid it down as necessary that you should, first of all, see her in the theatre, and, secondly, know her—­by fair means if possible, if not, by crooked ones—­in society.

It was nearly a quarter to eight.  The orchestra had taken their places, and almost every seat was full.  In one of the dress-circle boxes sat three people who had arrived early, and had for some time employed themselves in making a study of the incoming stream through their opera-glasses.  They were Eustace Kendal, his sister, Madame de Chateauvieux, and her husband.  The Chateauvieux had travelled over from Paris expressly for the occasion, and Madame de Chateauvieux, her gray-blue eyes sparkling with expectation and all her small delicate features alive with interest and animation, was watching for the rising of the heavy velvet curtain with an eagerness which brought down upon her the occasional mockery of her husband, who was in reality, however, little less excited than herself.  It was but three weeks since they had parted with Isabel Bretherton in Paris, and they were feeling on this first night something of the anxiety and responsibility which parents feel when they launch a child upon whom they have expended their best efforts into a critical world.

As for Eustace, he also had but that afternoon arrived in London.  He had been paying a long duty-visit to some aged relatives in the North, and had so lengthened it out, in accordance with the whim which had taken possession of him in Surrey, that he had missed all the preparations for Elvira, and had arrived upon the scene only at the moment when the final coup was to be delivered.  Miss Bretherton had herself sent him a warm note of invitation, containing an order for the first night and an appeal to him to come and ‘judge me as kindly as truth will let you.’  And he had answered her that, whatever happened, he would be in his place in the Calliope on the night of the 20th of November.

And now here he was, wearing outwardly precisely the same aspect of interested expectation as those around him, and all the time conscious inwardly that to him alone, of all the human beings in that vast theatre, the experience of the evening would be so vitally and desperately important, that life on the other side of it would bear the mark of it for ever.  It was a burden to him that his sister suspected nothing of his state of feeling; it would have consoled him that she should know it, but it seemed to him impossible to tell her.