_Less Than Kin_ _By_ _Alice Duer Miller_ [Illustration] _New York Henry Holt and Company 1909_ COPYRIGHT, 1909 BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY _Published May, 1909_ QUINN & BODEN COMPANY PRESS RAHWAY, N. J. LESS THAN KIN Chapter I The curtain rolled down, the horns gave forth a final blare, and the whole house rustled with returning self-consciousness. Mrs. Raikes and Miss Lewis had always had orchestra seats for Monday nights. Their well-brushed heads, their high jeweled collars, their little bare backs were as familiar to experienced opera-goers as the figure of the long-suffering doorman. They had the reputation of being musical. What indeed could prove it better than their preference for orchestra seats, when they might so easily have gone whenever they wanted in the boxes of their friends? As the lights went up, they both turned to the glittering tiers above them. The opera was a favorite and the house was full, though here and there an empty box caught one’s eye like a missing tooth. Miss Lewis was sweeping the semicircle like an astronomer in full cry after a comet. She had begun conscientiously at the stage box, and with but few comments she had reached the third or fourth, when her hand was arrested. There were three people in it--an old man in a velvet skull-cap, tall, thin, wrinkled, and strangely somber against the red-and-gold background; a younger man dimly seen in the shadow; and a slim young woman in gray. The curve of the house afforded examples of every sort and kind of brilliantly dressed lady. There were dowagers and young girls, there were women who forgot the public and lounged with an arm over the back of a little gilt chair, and there were others who sat almost too erect, presenting their jewels and their composed countenances to the gaze of whoever cared to admire. The lady in gray did neither. She sat leaning a little forward, and looking down absently into the orchestra, so that it was hard to tell how attentively she was listening to the man behind her. She had an extremely long waist, and had the effect of being balanced like a flower on its stalk. Miss Lewis, with her glass still on the box, exclaimed: “What, again! Wasn’t he with the Lees last week?” “You mean James Emmons,” answered Mrs. Raikes. “He is not with Nellie. He belongs somewhere on the other side of the house. He came into the box just before the _entr’acte_. Rather she than me. He has a singularly heavy hand in social interchange.”