Nevertheless, Leonora’s satisfaction in this triumph, her pleasure in the mere memory of the intimate talk by the fire, her innocent joyous desire to see Twemlow again soon, emanated from her in various subtle ways, and the household was thereby soothed back into a feeling of security about John.  Leonora ignored, perhaps deliberately, that Stanway had still before him the peril of financial embarrassment, that he was mortgaging the house, and that his colloquies with David Dain continued to be frequent and obviously disconcerting.  When she saw him nervous, petulant, preoccupied, she attributed his condition solely to his thought of the one danger which she had secretly removed.  She had a strange determined impulse to be happy and gay.

An episode at an extra Monday night rehearsal of the Amateur Operatic Society seemed to point to the prevalence of certain sinister rumours about Stanway’s condition.  Milly, inspired by dreams of the future, had learnt her part perfectly in five days.  She sang and acted with magnificent assurance, and with a vivid theatrical charm which awoke enthusiasm in the excitable breasts of the male chorus.  Harry Burgess lost his air of fatigued worldliness, and went round naively demanding to be told whether he had not predicted this miracle.  Even the conductor was somewhat moved.

‘She’ll do, by gad!’ said that man of few illusions to his crony the accompanist.

But it is not to be imagined that such a cardinal event as the elevation of a chit like Millicent Stanway to the principal role could achieve itself without much friction and consequent heat.  Many ladies of the chorus thought that the committee no longer deserved the confidence of the society.  At least three suspected that the conductor had a private spite against themselves.  And one, aged thirty-five, felt convinced that she was the victim of an elaborate and scandalous plot.  To this maid had been offered Milly’s old part of Ella; it was a final insult—­but she accepted it.  In the scene with Angela and Bunthorne in the first act, the new Ella made the same mistake three times at the words, ’In a doleful train,’ and the conductor grew sarcastic.

‘May I show you how that bit goes, Miss Gardner?’ said Milly afterwards with exquisite pertness.

‘No, thank you, Milly,’ was the freezing emphasised answer; ’I dare say I shall be able to manage without your assistance.’

‘Oh, ho!’ sang Milly, delighted to have provoked this exhibition, and she began a sort of Carmen dance of disdain.

‘Girls grow up so quick nowadays!’ Miss Gardner exclaimed, losing control of herself; ‘who are you, I should like to know!’ and she proceeded with her irrelevant inquiries:  ’who’s your father?  Doesn’t every one know that he’ll have gone smash before the night of the show?’ She was shaking, insensate, brutal.

Millicent stood still, and went very white.

‘Miss Gardner!’