“But I don’t know how you’re to get the bottle open, miss; we’ve no champagne nippers.”

After some conjecturing the wires were twisted off with a kitchen fork.  Evelyn kept her eyes on her father’s plate, and begged to be allowed to help him again, and she delighted in filling up his glass with wine; and though she longed to ask him if he had been to hear her sing, she did not allude to herself, but induced him to talk of his victories over Father Gordon.  This story of clerical jealousy and ignorance was intensely interesting to the old man, and she humoured him to the top of his bent.

“But it would all have come to nothing if it had not been for Monsignor Mostyn.”

She fetched him his pipe and tobacco.  “And who is Monsignor Mostyn?” she asked, dreading a long tale in which she could feel on interest at all.  She watched him filling his pipe, working the tobacco down with his little finger nail.  She thought she could see he was thinking of something different, and to her great joy he said—­

“Well, your Margaret is very good; better than I expected—­I am speaking of the singing; of course, as acting it was superb.”

“Oh, father! do tell me?  So you went after all?  I sent you a box and a stall, but you were in neither.  In what part of the theatre were you?”

“In the upper boxes; I did not want to dress.”  She leaned across the table with brightening eyes.  “For a dramatic soprano you sing that light music with extraordinary ease and fluency.”

“Did I sing it as well as mother?”

“Oh, my dear, it was quite different.  Your mother’s art was in her phrasing and in the ideal appearance she presented.”

“And didn’t I present an ideal appearance?”

“It’s like this, Evelyn.  The Margaret of Gounod and his librettist is not a real person, but a sort of keepsake beauty who sings keepsake music.  I assume that you don’t think much of the music; brought up as you have been on the Old Masters, you couldn’t.  Well, the question is whether parts designed in such an intention should be played in the like intention, or if they should be made living creations of flesh and blood, worked up by the power of the actress into something as near to the Wagner ideal as possible.  I admire your Margaret; it was a wonderful performance, but—­”

“But what, father?”

“It made me wish to see you in Elizabeth and Brunnhilde.  I was very sorry I couldn’t get to London last night.”

“You’d like my Elizabeth better.  Margaret is the only part of the old lot that I now sing.  I daresay you’re right.  I’ll limit myself for the future to the Wagner repertoire.”

“I think you’d do well.  Your genius is essentially in dramatic expression.  ‘Carmen,’ for instance, is better as Galli Marie used to play it than as you would play it.  ‘Carmen’ is a conventional type—­all art is convention of one kind or another, and each demands its own interpretation.  But I hope you don’t sing that horrid music.”