up, and he feigned a decent regret that there
was not room for Mrs. Adding and her son; he would have liked to ask
them.

Mrs. March did not enjoy it so much as coming with her husband alone
when they took two florin seats in the orchestra for the comedy. The
comedy always began half an hour earlier than the opera, and they had a
five-o'clock supper at the Theatre-Cafe before they went, and they got
to sleep by nine o'clock; now they would be up till half past ten at
least, and that orgy at Schwarzkopf's might not be at all good for him.
But still she liked being there; and Miss Triscoe made her take the best
seat; Burnamy and Stoller made the older men take the other seats beside
the ladies, while they sat behind, or stood up, when they, wished to
see, as people do in the back of a box. Stoller was not much at ease in
evening dress, but he bore himself with a dignity which was not perhaps
so gloomy as it looked; Mrs. March thought him handsome in his way, and
required Miss Triscoe to admire him. As for Burnamy's beauty it was not
necessary to insist upon that; he had the distinction of slender youth;
and she liked to think that no Highhote there was of a more patrician
presence than this yet unprinted contributor to 'Every Other Week'. He
and Stoller seemed on perfect terms; or else in his joy he was able to
hide the uneasiness which she had fancied in him from the first time she
saw them together, and which had never been quite absent from his manner
in Stoller's presence. Her husband always denied that it existed, or if
it did that it was anything but Burnamy's effort to get on common ground
with an inferior whom fortune had put over him.

The young fellow talked with Stoller, and tried to bring him into the
range of the general conversation. He leaned over the ladies, from time
to time, and pointed out the notables whom he saw in the house; she was
glad, for his sake, that he did not lean less over her than over Miss
Triscoe. He explained certain military figures in the boxes opposite,
and certain ladies of rank who did not look their rank; Miss Triscoe,
to Mrs. March's thinking, looked their united ranks, and more; her dress
was very simple, but of a touch which saved it from being insipidly
girlish; her beauty was dazzling.

"Do you see that old fellow in the corner chair just behind the
orchestra?" asked Burnamy. "He's ninety-six years old, and he comes to
the theatre every night, and falls asleep as soon as t