n Lardy Carloes' hair
from her head had the chairs been happily arranged.

Fortunately the interruption had been accompanied by Beckmesser's
entrance: that other voice was, for the moment, still. Then, as Sachs
caught up Beckmesser's serenade, there came again:

"Well, of course if you can't go that week-end I dare say she'll give
you another. Only I know she's settling her dates now."

"Yes, but it's a bore havin' to fix up such a long way ahead and you
don't know what old stumers you mayn't be boxed up with----"

Oh! It was abominable! She had been seeing a great deal of Roddy during
these last weeks, and ever since that visit to Uncle Richard she had
been conscious of an intimacy that she had certainly not resented.

But any favour that he may have had with her was certainly now
forfeited. His voice was again superior to Beckmesser:

"And so of course I said that if they _would_ go to such shockin' rot I
wasn't goin' to waste my evenin's----"

She pushed her chair back against his knees: "Beg pardon, Miss
Beaminster, afraid I jolted you----"

"Oh! Keep quiet! Keep quiet!"

Her whisper was so urgent, so packed with irritation that instantly
there was, in the box, the deepest of silences.

She sat forward again, anger choking her: she could not recover any
illusion. She hated him, _hated_ him! The crowd came on with a whirl.
Then there was that last moment when the old watchman cries to the
genial moon and the silvered roofs.

Then the curtain fell.

Without a word, her face white, her hands still trembling, she rose to
leave the box. She passed out into the passage and found that Roddy was
by her side.

"I say, Miss Beaminster, I am most awfully sorry, most awfully. I hadn't
any idea, really, that I was kickin' up that row. I could have hit
myself."

She walked down the passage and he followed her. She was superb, she was
indeed, with her head up, that neck, those hands, those flashing eyes.
He had never seen anyone so fine. She ought always to be enraged. That
instant decided him. She was the woman for a man to have for his own,
someone who could look like someone at the head of your table, someone
with the right blood in her veins, someone....

"I could _beat_ myself," he said again.

"How dared you----" she broke out at last. They were, by good luck,
alone in the passage. "How could you? What do you come for if you care
nothing for music at all? If you can hear a voice like that and then
talk a