wondering if it were his, and sometimes made
inquiries as to the owner of any particularly eligible residence. I
heard of Brauns, Muellers, Piepers, Schmidts, and the like, as owners of
the same--never the name Courvoisier. He had disappeared--I feared
forever.

Coming in weary one day from the town, where I had been striving to make
myself understood in shops, I was met by Anna Sartorius on the stairs.
She had not yet ceased to be civil to me--civil, that is, in her
way--and my unreasoning aversion to her was as great as ever.

"This is the last opera of the season," said she, displaying a pink
ticket. "I am glad you will get to see one, as the theater closes after
to-night."

"But I am not going."

"Yes, you are. Miss Hallam has a ticket for you. I am going to chaperon
you."

"I must go and see about that," said I, hastily rushing upstairs.

The news, incredible though it seemed, was quite true. The ticket lay
there. I picked it up and gazed at it fondly. Stadttheater zu Elberthal.
Parquet, No. 16. As I had never been in a theater in my life, this
conveyed no distinct idea to my mind, but it was quite enough for me
that I was going. The rest of the party, I found, were to consist of
Vincent, the Englishman, Anna Sartorius, and the Dutch boy, Brinks.

It was Friday evening, and the opera was "Lohengrin." I knew nothing,
then, about different operatic styles, and my ideas of operatic music
were based upon duets upon selected airs from "La Traviata," "La
Somnambula," and "Lucia." I thought the story of "Lohengrin," as related
by Vincent, interesting. I was not in the least aware that my first
opera was to be a different one from that of most English girls. Since,
I have wondered sometimes what would be the result upon the musical
taste of a person who was put through a course of Wagnerian opera first,
and then turned over to the Italian school--leaving Mozart, Beethoven,
Gluck, to take care of themselves, as they may very well do--thus
exactly reversing the usual (English) process.

Anna was very quiet that evening. Afterward I knew that she must have
been observing me. We were in the first row of the parquet, with the
orchestra alone between us and the stage. I was fully occupied in
looking about me--now at the curtain hiding the great mystery, now
behind and above me at the boxes, in a youthful state of ever-increasing
hope and expectation.

"We are very early," said Vincent, who was next to me, "very early