Mrs. Lascelles, like many of her sex, entertained a high opinion of her own medical skill in all ailments of mind or body. If your finger ached she would produce an absurd little box, the size of a Geneva watch, from which, with an infinitesimal gold spoon, like a bodkin, she proceeded to give you a strong dose, consisting of two white atoms not so large as pins' heads, dissolved in a glass of pure water, which they neither flavoured nor coloured, nor otherwise affected in the least. Repeating this elfin discipline two or three times with the utmost gravity, she would have been exceedingly mortified, and almost offended, if you had not declared yourself better forthwith. And it is but fair to say that I never heard of any one being worse for the prescriptions she dispensed with such confidence and liberality.

But if the pain was in your heart this general practitioner buckled on her armour with yet greater alacrity, and confronted the enemy on a far more vigorous system of tactics. She refrained indeed, wisely enough, from prematurely assaulting his stronghold, but attacked his outworks one by one with unflinching determination, so that the citadel, deprived on all sides of its supports, wavered, collapsed, and surrendered at discretion.

One of the most powerful engines with which she battered, so to speak, the obstinate fortresses garrisoned by such tried veterans as Memory, Pique, and Disappointment, was a "little gaiety," by which Mrs. Lascelles understood a round of London amusements and continual change of scene. "Sympathy, my dear," she would say, with a comical little sigh and shake of her dainty head, "sympathy from those who have felt sorrow, and going about—to good places, of course—with dancing, you know, and plenty of partners, will cure anything. Anything! I assure you, for I've tried it; except, perhaps, a broken neck!"

In pursuance, then, of this extremely plausible theory, it was not long after the events described in the last chapter, that Miss Hallaton found herself sitting next Mrs. Lascelles in a box at the Opera, hoping, no doubt, for that distraction from sorrow which I fear is seldom found in music, mirth, or gaiety; but which is rarely sought in vain by the pillow of suffering, in the house of mourning, under any roof or in any situation where we can lend a willing hand at the great cable of brotherly love and unselfish effort, which alone hauls the ship's company into port at last.

It seems to me that sights and sounds of beauty serve but to add a cruel poison to the sting; whereas honest, unremitting toil, provides us a certain opiate; and active charity towards others draws gradually the venom from our wound.

Helen had suffered acutely. The girl's pride was humbled to the dust, and even that infliction was not the worst. Her gods had deceived her, and her idols proved to be but clay. Frank Vanguard's conduct was more than fickle, more than heartless; it seemed actually brutal and unmanly! Since her reply to the letter in which he asked her to become his wife, he had never been near her, had held no communication with her family nor herself, but had avoided them all with a persistence insulting as it was unaccountable.

Whatever reasons he might have, she felt his conduct was utterly inexcusable, and Helen endured that bitterest of all punishments, the conviction not only that her love was without return, but that she had bestowed it on an unworthy object; had misconceived the very nature, mistaken the very identity of him whom she once felt proud to know so thoroughly, whom she imagined no one thus knew but herself.

"I thought him so different!" In that simple sentence—said by how many, and how bitterly!—lurked all the sorrow, all the humiliation, all the despair. The man she loved had never really existed. She must teach herself to forget this dream, this delusion, as if it had never been. With woman's fortitude of endurance, woman's decency of courage, Helen fought her battle, hid her wounds, and swallowed her tears, but the struggle told on her severely. Sir Henry, cursing late hours and hot rooms, talked of taking his daughter back to the country. Even Jin's heart smote her when she marked the pale face, the drooping gestures, the sad, weary looks; while Mrs. Lascelles, insisting on her own treatment of a malady she was persuaded she alone could cure, took every opportunity of administering amusement in large doses, and esteemed no part of her regimen more efficacious than these long hours of heat, glare, noise, imprisonment, and musical stupefaction, spent at the Italian Opera.

So Helen, watching the business of the stage with eyes from which the tears would not keep back, while those thrilling strains rose and fell in the outcry of remorseful passion, or the wail of hopeless, yet undying love, wondered vaguely why there should be all this sorrow upon earth, springing, apparently, from the purest and most elevated instincts of the human heart. She forgot that a time would come hereafter, perhaps on this side the grave, when the misery that was eating into her own young life must seem no less unreasonable, no less unreal, than that of the harmonious lady yonder, in pearls and white satin, who would take her place at supper in an hour, with spirits and appetite unimpaired by the breaking heart that, flying mellifluously to her lips in this intricate cavatina, brought down on her a rainbow shower of bouquets, followed by a thunderstorm of applause. "That is singing!" said Miss Ross, from the back of the box, drawing a long breath of intense enjoyment, the enjoyment of the artist who appreciates as well as admires. "Rose, why didn't I bring a bouquet? I'd throw my head at her if it would take off!"

Mrs. Lascelles laughed, and made a sign signifying "Hush!" while Miss Ross whispered over Helen's shoulder—"Isn't it too delightful, dear? In my opinion music's the only thing worth living for!"

Helen, who esteemed nothing much worth living for at that moment, responded with modified enthusiasm, and turned languidly to the stage. Just then the box-door opened; and she knew, though he was behind her, and had not spoken a syllable, that it admitted Frank Vanguard!

He couldn't keep away! Of course he would not have allowed that any part of this crowded house held for him the slightest attraction.

Fidgetting in the stalls, and getting Helen's well-remembered profile within range of his opera-glasses, it was only natural he should tell himself she could never be more to him than a humiliating memory, a cause of gratitude for his narrow escape. It was also natural that he should take his good manners severely to task for negligence, in not having called lately on Mrs. Lascelles, and should scout the notion of being kept out of her box by anybody in the world, man or woman! So, looking paler than usual, and, for once in his life, almost pompous in his embarrassment, he tapped at the door, and found himself stumbling over a delicate little satin-shod foot, belonging to Miss Ross, of whose presence, to do him justice, till he made this ungainly entrance, he had not the slightest suspicion!

"It's a good omen!" thought that quaint and speculative young person, while her heart too was beating faster than common. "I shall trip you up at last, sir; and what a fall I'll give you!" But she reflected also that they would probably go down together; and there was something not unpleasant in the apprehension.

Frank recovered himself sufficiently to greet Mrs. Lascelles with customary politeness, and made Helen a ceremonious bow, without offering to shake hands. She construed the omission into a studied and gratuitous slight.

So the poor girl turned once more to the stage, leaning her cheek on her hand, and wondering sadly, almost humbly, what she had done to be so punished, tried to interest herself in the progress of the opera.

A tenor, swelling in black velvet, was expressing intense adoration of some object unknown, possibly the great chandelier, at which he trilled and quavered with unflagging persistency—lifting to it eyes, eye-brows, chest, and shoulders, rising on his toes, as if, like the skylark soaring and singing towards the light, he would fain project himself, his voice, his trunk-breeches, and his dearest affections, right through the roof!

Nor did he seem in the slightest degree influenced by suspicion or dismay, though the stage, becoming gradually darkened, filled rapidly with assassins, all wearing black cloaks, black masks, black gloves, brandishing poniards, and bursting forth—as was extremely natural in a band of paid murderers stealing on their victim—into a magnificent and deafening chorus, such as caused the very curls of the Conductor to vibrate on his head, while he waved his baton to and fro in spasmodic frenzy, the crisis of a musical delirium.

It was Jin's opportunity. From her dark corner those black eyes flashed like lamps, while she murmured, under cover of the ophicleide and the big drum:

"You've never been to see us, Captain Vanguard. Rose has missed you sadly, and—and—so have I."

A vacant chair stood by her own, so close, that her gown partly covered its cushion. There was obvious invitation in her gesture, while she removed the intrusive fold, and Frank dropped willingly enough into that vacant seat.

Wounded, sore, reckless, angry with one woman, he was in a mood to render the attractions of such another as Miss Ross extremely dangerous. His attention being taken off his own grievances, the cessation of pain was in itself delightful; and I fear he had too little generosity to forbear the petty triumph of showing Miss Hallaton that others could care for him even if she did not. Besides, the act of flirting with such a professor as Jin in the dark corner of an opera-box, however dangerous, was, in itself, no unpleasant pastime; so, while Helen, cold and sick at heart, suffered herself to be deafened by chorus and orchestra, Frank, to use his own expression, "went in a perisher, and made tremendous running with Miss Ross!"

She was an experienced angler, so perfect in the art that being in earnest rather increased her skill than otherwise. The popularity of our Italian Opera is not entirely due to its music, the best and the highest paid for in Europe. Its boxes form also a convenient territory for the prosecution of those skirmishes, which would become actual warfare but for the nature of the ground on which they take place. There are fair and dazzling visions, there are soft, sad sounds—most intoxicating when softest and saddest. There is bright glare on others, semi-obscurity for ourselves. There are sympathy, juxta-position, a common object of interest, a necessity for whispers, and a propriety in absolute silence, which is in itself the strongest possible stimulant to conversation. Above all, there is a certain sentiment of isolation, the result of being shut up together for a definite period, that renders people mutually attractive; just as no man alive can accompany a woman, however ugly, for a long sea voyage, and not fall in love with her to a certainty.

"You don't, and you know you don't!" whispered Jin, in answer to some wild remark of Frank's, drowned for all ears but her own in an outrageous crash of brass instruments. "Though, mind, I won't have you fancy for a moment that I lump you in with the others, tie you all up in a bunch, and label you 'poison.' No, I shall not give you my poor gardenia. You'll take it on to Lady Clearwell's, I dare say. But it will never get any farther than the first pretty woman you dance with. Water! Pooh! It would wither, poor thing, and much you'd care for it, then! Well, if you really promise——No. I won't. I never did in my life, and I won't begin! You needn't move, it's only Goldie. Now that's a faithful admirer, if you like!"

It was indeed none other but this devoted swain, who, meekly entering, and paying homage stiffly enough to Mrs. Lascelles, seated himself between that lady and Helen, but afforded the former far the largest share of his attention and indisputable remarks on things in general.

The mistress of the box could not be said to be disappointed, though she wished it was somebody else, for her glasses were even now fixed on that somebody's drooping aristocratic old head, a dozen feet below her. Why did he not come up? She owed him the less grudge for this neglect, that she had a strong conviction Sir Henry Hallaton was fast asleep in his stall.

Mrs. Lascelles stifled a sigh.

"It's up-hill work—very!" she said to her own heart. "And I'm making this other poor fellow sadly wretched. He's like the people one reads about in a novel. He never complains. I wish he would! I wish he'd scold me well, and tell me what a beast I am!"

Touching his arm with her fan, while she made some trifling observation, it cut her to the quick to observe how his face brightened up, like a dog's at the voice of its master; and for the first time Mrs. Lascelles found herself entertaining a vague suspicion that it might be unwise as well as unfeeling to throw away so much confiding adoration, to barter a reality that would last her lifetime, for a mere fancy, less tangible and less permanent than a dream. So, with half-a-dozen kind words, meaning nothing, she lifted this simple young man to the seventh heaven of transport, reaping, from her own act, the quiet satisfaction that follows such deeds of benevolence and common humanity.

Meanwhile, Frank had risen to go. Carefully abstaining from the slightest glance in Miss Hallaton's direction, he took an exceedingly affectionate leave of Miss Ross, and resumed his stall, which was next to that of Sir Henry, fastening a gardenia, with some little pretension, in his button-hole.

"Been on the war-path," thought Sir Henry, waking up from a doze and observing this lately-won decoration. "Quick work. Taken a scalp already, and hanging it on his belt." Then he remembered his own daughter was in the house, and meditated grimly on the deadly penalties he would exact from any man who should be so rash as to trifle with Helen; consoled, however, by the reflection that she was the last girl in the world to yield even so light a trophy as a flower to one who had not earned it in honourable and legitimate warfare.

"What's the attraction, Jin?" asked Mrs. Lascelles, with something of irritation in her tone. "You've never taken your glasses off one spot in the stalls for the last ten minutes! Will you share the object amongst us, or must you keep it all to yourself?"

Miss Ross was never at a loss.

"It's the tower of Babel, dear," she answered, good humouredly, "before the confusion of tongues. Did you ever see such a head! There, two rows behind Sir Henry Hallaton. The woman in pink, with all those beads wound round her, bangles on her arms, and, I do believe, a fish-bone through her nose! I can see it, I'm sure, when she turns this way!" Thus Jin, with her glasses in her lap, with mirth and mischief in her eyes, to all appearance with no sentiment but ridicule in her heart.

Miss Ross deserved credit, I think, for unscrupulous invention and readiness of resource, also for the quickness with which she pounced on the woman in pink, a respectable matron, whose head-gear, modelled after that of a notorious Parisian impropriety, was simply such as she saw worn by ladies of her own station and repute every night of her life.

Jin would have studied this apparition perhaps more attentively, but that her whole soul was projecting itself, as it were, through her glasses, towards Frank Vanguard and his gardenia. She did not regret giving it him now. She was falling horribly in love with him. How she would have hated Helen, she thought, but that she could afford to pity her!

I have said this enthusiast really enjoyed an opera, loving fine even more dearly than pretty music.

Deferring, therefore, till to-morrow the laying of plans, calculation of chances, that laborious train of reflection in which she knew too well she must collect the resources of her head to attain the desire of her heart, she sat back in her chair, and abandoned herself to one of those dreams which are perhaps the most ecstatic of all visions vouchsafed to us poor children of clay.

To repose unobserved in a corner, to drink in sounds of more than mortal sweetness, on which the soul, linked to one dear image, like Paolo in the arms of Francesca, floats away, away through the realms of space, into the fabulous regions of unchanging, unadulterated love,—is not this a happiness to which the joy of fruition, the content of security, must seem sadly tame and insipid, to which the "sober certainty of waking bliss" is but vulgar reality, clogging the wings of impossible romance?

And now the performance drew to a close. The tenor had sung his aria of triumphant villany, and his solo of despairing remorse. The basso, having cursed through the whole gamut in exceedingly correct time, had fallen on his knees at the foot-lights, tearing a white wig, after the approved pattern of King Lear. Priests, soldiers, friars, courtiers, townsmen, stately nobles, and smiling peasant-girls, thronged the entire depth of the stage, while above the motley crowd waved and flaunted symbols of religion, spoils of warfare, and the banner of France. The prima donna, venting shriek on shriek, with surprising shrillness and rapidity, had died in convulsions of unusual energy, and even repeated her demise, after an enthusiastic encore; the orchestra, becoming louder, fiercer, faster, with each successive bar, had worked up to the grand deafening and discordant crash, which is esteemed a worthy finale to all great compositions, and the curtain hovering to a fall, glasses were cased, white shoulders cloaked, both on and off the stage all acting was over, and the audience rose to go away.

Let us follow Mrs. Lascelles and her party, escorted only by the constant Goldthred, as they leave their box to attain the stairs, the crush-room, the carriage, and eventually the street.

We shall not need to hurry—their progress, gaining about a yard a minute, is slow and deliberate as a funeral. At the lowest step of the whole flight, Helen is aware of Frank Vanguard making his way through the crush, apparently with the intention of joining their party. In her distress, looking wildly round for help, she catches sight of her father's grizzled head above the surface; and, meeting his eye, telegraphs for assistance. Sir Henry, whose redeeming point is the care he takes of his daughter, makes no cessation of edging, sliding, bowing, and begging pardon, till he reaches her side, and thus places himself in a false position as regards the ladies he has lately left. They cling to him with annoying persistence, and he condemns himself, very forcibly too, though below his breath, more than once for having a daughter "out," and yet choosing to know such women as Mrs. Battersea and her sister, Kate Cremorne. He must not introduce them to Mrs. Lascelles, as they obviously wish; he will not introduce them to Helen, though they would like this too; and how can he ignore them completely, when he is engaged to supper this very night at their house? With all his careless selfishness, it annoyed Sir Henry exceedingly to be guilty of a rudeness or unkindness towards any one, and he formed more good resolutions to avoid doubtful society for the future in the half-dozen paces he waded through that stream of muslin four feet deep, and all the colours of the rainbow, than he had made, and broken, in his whole life before.

Ere he could accost Helen, however, assistance arrived from an unexpected quarter. Picard, who was just as sure to be at the Opera as any one of the fiddles in the orchestra, recognised his fellow-travellers from Windsor with a profound and enthusiastic bow, followed by a smiling approach, in which his teeth, his whiskers, his grin, and his stealthy yet confident demeanour, proclaimed the "tiger" of social life, not wanting in some of the attributes belonging to his nobler namesake, the terror of the jungle.

In another stride he would have offered his arm to Helen, but Mrs. Lascelles, warned by Sir Henry's eye, interposed, and seeing no other way of saving her charge, with a devotion almost maternal, cast off from Goldthred and seized it herself.

"Take care of Helen!" she whispered in the latter's ear, while the flowers in her wreath brushed his very cheek. "This man mustn't take her—you understand! Come to-morrow to luncheon."

The whisper and its purport made him quite happy; Mrs. Lascelles had also the satisfaction of observing something like displeasure cloud Sir Henry's eyes as they rested on herself and her impromptu cavalier.

"If he's cross it shows he cares," was her first thought. "Ah! he'll never care like the other one,"—her second, and that which remained longest in her mind.

The "other one," in the mean time, walked meekly on towards the carriage with Helen tucked under his elbow, thus freeing Sir Henry from his embarrassment, and leaving him at leisure to devote his attentions to Mrs. Battersea, who was, indeed, by no means inclined to let him off.

Mrs. Lascelles followed on the arm of Picard, who behaved as well as he could, though he would rather have taken Helen; these were succeeded by Jin and Frank Vanguard, apparently very well pleased with each other and thoroughly disposed to accept the situation.

I know not what Frank whispered, but gather that it was something complimentary by his companion's answer.

"We're not the only ones!" said Jin, looking up from under a scarlet hood, like a bewitching gipsy.

"How do you mean?" asked Frank, innocently enough.

"Don't you see your old love and Mr. Goldthred?" was the reply. "Confess now—honour! You did care for her once!"

"A little, perhaps," he answered lightly, though his lip quivered, and she saw it.

"But you don't now?" she pursued, leaning towards him with a gesture of confiding tenderness impossible to resist.

"You know I don't," he answered, and pressed the arm that rested on his own, gently but firmly to his heart.

She broke into one of those rare smiles by which, on occasion, she knew how to rivet her work so securely.

"It's a case, I'm sure!" she exclaimed. "They'll be a very happy couple, and I can wish her joy now with all my heart!"