She shook her head.

“You are sanguine, my friend,” she said.  “Many generations have come and gone since the wonderful pages of history were opened to us.  And during all these years how much nearer have the serf and the aristocrat come together?  Nay, have they not rather drifted apart? ...  But listen!  This is the great chorus.  We must not miss it.”

“So the Prince has brought back the wanderer,” Lady Carey whispered to Mr. Sabin behind her fan.  “Hasn’t he rather the air of a sheep who has strayed from the fold?”

Mr. Sabin raised the horn eyeglass, which he so seldom used, and contemplated Brott steadily.

“He reminds me more than ever,” he remarked, “of Rienzi.  He is like a man torn asunder by great causes.  They say that his speech at Glasgow was the triumph of a born orator.”

Lady Carey shrugged her shoulders.

“It was practically the preaching a revolution to the people,” she said.  “A few more such, and we might have the red flag waving.  He left Glasgow in a ferment.  If he really comes into power, what are we to expect?”

“To the onlookers,” Mr. Sabin remarked, “a revolution in this country would possess many interesting features.  The common people lack the ferocity of our own rabble, but they are even more determined.  I may yet live to see an English Duke earning an honest living in the States.”

“It depends very much upon Brott,” Lady Carey said.  “For his own sake it is a pity that he is in love with Lucille.”

Mr. Sabin agreed with her blandly.

“It is,” he affirmed, “a most regrettable incident.”

She leaned a little towards him.  The box was not a large one, and their chairs already touched.

“Are you a jealous husband?” she asked.

“Horribly,” he answered.

“Your devotion to Lucille, or rather the singleness of your devotion to Lucille,” she remarked, “is positively the most gauche thing about you.  It is—­absolutely callow!”

He laughed gently.

“Did I not always tell you,” he said, “that when I did marry I should make an excellent husband?”

“You are at least,” she answered sharply, “a very complaisant one.”

The Prince leaned forward from the shadows of the box.

“I invite you all,” he said, “to supper with me.  It is something of an occasion, this!  For I do not think that we shall all meet again just as we are now for a very long time.”

“Your invitation,” Mr. Sabin remarked, “is most agreeable.  But your suggestion is, to say the least of it, nebulous.  I do not see what is to prevent your all having supper with me to-morrow evening.”

Lady Carey laughed as she rose, and stretched out her hand for her cloak.

“To-morrow evening,” she said, “is a long way off.  Let us make sure of to-night—­before the Prince changes his mind.”

Mr. Sabin bowed low.