It was all lost upon Ida, whose head was in the clouds, whose mind was
dwelling on the past; but his mother and sister noticed it, and Mrs.
Heron began to sniff by way of disapproval of his conduct. With a
mother's sharp eyes, Mrs. Heron understood why Joseph had launched out
into new suits and brilliant neckties, why he came home earlier than
was his wont, and why he hung about the pale-faced girl who seemed
unconscious of his presence. Mrs. Heron began to feel, as she would
have expressed it, that she had taken a viper into her bosom. She was
ambitious for her only son, and wanted to see him married to one of the
daughters of a retired city man who had settled in Woodgreen. Ida was
all very well, but she was absolutely penniless and not a good enough
match for so brilliant and promising a young man as Joseph. Mrs. Heron
began to regard her with a certain amount of coldness and suspicion;
but Ida was as unconscious of the change in Mrs. Heron's manner as she
was of the cause of Mr. Joseph's attention; to her he was just an
objectionable young man of quite a new and astonishing type, to whom
she was obliged to listen because he was the son of the man whose bread
she ate.
He had often invited Ida to accompany him and Isabel to a _matinée_,
but Ida always declined. Not only was her father's death too recent to
permit of her going to the theatre, but she shrank from all public
places of amusement. When she had left Herondale it had been with the
one desire to conceal herself, and, if possible, to earn her own
living. Mr. Joseph was very sulky over her refusal, and Isabel informed
her that he had been so ill-tempered at the theatre that she did not
know what to make of him.
One day he came in soon after luncheon, and, when Mrs. Heron had left
the room, informed Ida and Isabel that he had got tickets for a concert
at the Queen's Hall that evening.
"It's a sacred concert," he said, "so that you need have no scruples,
Ida. It's a regular swell affair, and I tell you I had great difficulty
in getting hold of the tickets. It's a charity concert got up by the
big nobs of the Stock Exchange, and there'll be no end of swells there.
I got the tickets because the guv'nor's going into the country to
preach to-night, and while the cat's away we can slip out and enjoy
ourselves; not that he'd object to a sacred concert, I suppose,
especially if he were allowed to hold forth during the intervals," he
added, with a sneer.