'They won't try it now,' she said, at last, very confidently.
The maid shrugged her thin shoulders, as if to say that she declined to
take any responsibility in the matter, and did not otherwise care much.
'Do exactly as I told you,' Madame Bonanni said. 'If anything goes
wrong, it will be my fault, not yours.' 'Very good, Madame,' answered the maid.
She went away, and Madame Bonanni returned to her seat in the front of
the box, without any apparent intention of explaining matters to
Lushington.
'What is happening?' he asked after a few moments. 'Can I be of any
use?' 'Not yet,' answered his mother. 'But you may be, by and by. I shall
want you to take a message to her.' 'To Miss Donne? When?' 'Have you ever been behind in this theatre? Do you know your way
about?' 'Yes. What am I to do?' Madame Bonanni did not answer at once. She was scrutinising the faces
of the courtiers on the darkened stage, and wishing very much that
there were more light.
'Schreiermeyer is doing things handsomely,' Lushington observed. 'He
has really given us a good allowance of conspirators.' 'There are four more than usual,' said Madame Bonanni, who had counted
the chorus.
'They make a very good show,' Lushington observed indifferently. 'But I
did not think they made much noise in the Introduction, when they were
expected to.' 'Perhaps,' suggested Madame Bonanni, 'the four supernumeraries are
dummies, put on to fill up.' Just then the chorus was explaining at great length, as choruses in
operas often do, that it was absolutely necessary not to make the least
noise, while Rigoletto stood at the foot of the ladder, pretending
neither to hear them nor to know, in the supposed total darkness, that
his eyes were bandaged.
'Have you seen Logotheti?' asked Lushington.
'Not yet, but I shall certainly see him before it's over. I'm sure that
he is somewhere in the house.' 'He came over from Paris in his motor car,' Lushington said.
'I know he did.' There was no reason why she should not know that Logotheti had come in
his car, but Lushington thought she seemed annoyed that the words
should have slipped out. Her eyes were still fixed intently on the
stage.
She rose to her feet suddenly, as if she had seen something that
startled her.
'Wait for me!' she said almost sharply, as she passed her son.
She was gone in an instant, and Lushington leaned back in his seat,
indifferent to what was going on, since Margaret had disappeared from
the stage. As for his mother's unexpected departure, he never was
surprised at anything she did, and whatever she did, she generally did
without warning, with a rush, as if some one's life depended on it. He
fancied that her practised eye had noticed something that did not
please her in the stage management, and that she had hurried away to
give her opinion.