Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/134

130 according to the rules of high art and to the music of Donizetti is very charming, no doubt; but we don't want our wives and daughters to learn how they may poison us without fear of detection. What do you say, Rinval?" he asked, turning to a young officer who had just entered the box. "Do you think I am right?"

"Entirely, my dear marquis. The representation of such a hideous subject is a sin against beauty and innocence," he said, bowing to Valerie. "And, though the music is very exquisite"

"Yes," said Valerie, "my uncle cannot help admiring the music. How have they been singing to night?"

"Why, strange to say, for once De Lancy has disappointed his admirers. His Gennaro is a very weak performance."

"Indeed!" She takes her bouquet in her hand and plays with the drooping blossom of a snowdrop. "A weak performance? You surprise me really!" She might be speaking of the flowers she holds, from the perfect indifference of her tone.

"They say he is ill," continues Monsieur Rinval. "He almost broke down in the 'Pescator ignobile.' But the curtain has risen—we shall have the poison scene soon, and you can judge for yourself."

She laughs. "Nay," she says, "I have never been so enthusiastic an admirer of this young man as you are, Monsieur Rinval. I should not think the world had come to an end if he happened to sing a false note."

The young Parisian bent over her chair, admiring her grace and beauty—admiring, perhaps, more than all, the haughty indifference with which she spoke of the opera-singer, as if he were something too far removed from her sphere for her to be in earnest about him even for one moment. Might he not have wondered even more, if he had admired her less, could he have known that as she looked up at him with a radiant face, she could not even see him standing close beside her; that to her clouded sight the opera-house was only a confusion of waving lights and burning eyes; and that, in the midst of a chaos of blood and fire, she saw the vision of her lover and her husband dying by the hand that had caressed him?

"Now for the banquet scene," exclaimed Monsieur Rinval. "Ah! there is Gennaro. Is he not gloriously handsome in ruby velvet and gold? That clubbed Venetian wig becomes him. It is a wig, I suppose."

"Oh, no doubt. That sort of people owe half their beauty to wigs, and white and red paint, do they not?" she asked, contemptuously; and even as she spoke she was thinking of