y were singing. When Lucia
appeared by the fountain there was loud applause, and cries of "Welcome
to Monteriano!"

"Ridiculous babies!" said Harriet, settling down in her stall.

"Why, it is the famous hot lady of the Apennines," cried Philip; "the
one who had never, never before--"

"Ugh! Don't. She will be very vulgar. And I'm sure it's even worse here
than in the tunnel. I wish we'd never--"

Lucia began to sing, and there was a moment's silence. She was stout
and ugly; but her voice was still beautiful, and as she sang the theatre
murmured like a hive of happy bees. All through the coloratura she
was accompanied by sighs, and its top note was drowned in a shout of
universal joy.

So the opera proceeded. The singers drew inspiration from the audience,
and the two great sextettes were rendered not unworthily. Miss Abbott
fell into the spirit of the thing. She, too, chatted and laughed and
applauded and encored, and rejoiced in the existence of beauty. As for
Philip, he forgot himself as well as his mission. He was not even an
enthusiastic visitor. For he had been in this place always. It was his
home.

Harriet, like M. Bovary on a more famous occasion, was trying to follow
the plot. Occasionally she nudged her companions, and asked them what
had become of Walter Scott. She looked round grimly. The audience
sounded drunk, and even Caroline, who never took a drop, was swaying
oddly. Violent waves of excitement, all arising from very little, went
sweeping round the theatre. The climax was reached in the mad scene.
Lucia, clad in white, as befitted her malady, suddenly gathered up her
streaming hair and bowed her acknowledgment to the audience. Then from
the back of the stage--she feigned not to see it--there advanced a kind
of bamboo clothes-horse, stuck all over with bouquets. It was very ugly,
and most of the flowers in it were false. Lucia knew this, and so did
the audience; and they all knew that the clothes-horse was a piece of
stage property, brought in to make the performance go year after year.
None the less did it unloose the great deeps. With a scream of amazement
and joy she embraced the animal, pulled out one or two practicable
blossoms, pressed them to her lips, and flung them into her admirers.
They flung them back, with loud melodious cries, and a little boy in one
of the stageboxes snatched up his sister's carnations and offered them.
"Che carino!" exclaimed the singer. She darted at the little bo