So this strenuous day of resolutions, plans, alarms, battles, victories, defeats, truces, ended at the opera.  Miss Abbott and Harriet were both a little shame-faced.  They thought of their friends at Sawston, who were supposing them to be now tilting against the powers of evil.  What would Mrs. Herriton, or Irma, or the curates at the Back Kitchen say if they could see the rescue party at a place of amusement on the very first day of its mission?  Philip, too, marvelled at his wish to go.  He began to see that he was enjoying his time in Monteriano, in spite of the tiresomeness of his companions and the occasional contrariness of himself.

He had been to this theatre many years before, on the occasion of a performance of “La Zia di Carlo.”  Since then it had been thoroughly done up, in the tints of the beet-root and the tomato, and was in many other ways a credit to the little town.  The orchestra had been enlarged, some of the boxes had terra-cotta draperies, and over each box was now suspended an enormous tablet, neatly framed, bearing upon it the number of that box.  There was also a drop-scene, representing a pink and purple landscape, wherein sported many a lady lightly clad, and two more ladies lay along the top of the proscenium to steady a large and pallid clock.  So rich and so appalling was the effect, that Philip could scarcely suppress a cry.  There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy; it is not the bad taste of a country which knows no better; it has not the nervous vulgarity of England, or the blinded vulgarity of Germany.  It observes beauty, and chooses to pass it by.  But it attains to beauty’s confidence.  This tiny theatre of Monteriano spraddled and swaggered with the best of them, and these ladies with their clock would have nodded to the young men on the ceiling of the Sistine.

Philip had tried for a box, but all the best were taken:  it was rather a grand performance, and he had to be content with stalls.  Harriet was fretful and insular.  Miss Abbott was pleasant, and insisted on praising everything:  her only regret was that she had no pretty clothes with her.

“We do all right,” said Philip, amused at her unwonted vanity.

“Yes, I know; but pretty things pack as easily as ugly ones.  We had no need to come to Italy like guys.”

This time he did not reply, “But we’re here to rescue a baby.”  For he saw a charming picture, as charming a picture as he had seen for years—­the hot red theatre; outside the theatre, towers and dark gates and mediaeval walls; beyond the walls olive-trees in the starlight and white winding roads and fireflies and untroubled dust; and here in the middle of it all, Miss Abbott, wishing she had not come looking like a guy.  She had made the right remark.  Most undoubtedly she had made the right remark.  This stiff suburban woman was unbending before the shrine.

“Don’t you like it at all?” he asked her.