Much as Sir Douglas spoiled his niece, she "knew her place," as Lucy expressed it, better than to keep him waiting; and the reverberations of the knocker had not died away when she appeared. Sir Douglas ran his eye with satisfaction over the details of her toilet. It was an excellent thing for her, in this time of hard work and heart-hunger, that she felt the bounden necessity of living up to the level of Sir Douglas's expectations. She cared intensely for his approbation; partly for her own sake, partly because to him she represented the whole race of "learned women"; and she could not well have had a more friendly, frank, and fastidious critic. The theatre was crowded when they entered their box. Like many habitual theatre-goers Sir Douglas hated boxes, but he had applied for seats too late to get anything else. It was the first night of a new melodrama,--new in actual date, but in all essentials old as the history of man. A noble magnificent hero; a sweet loyal wife; a long period of persecution, separation, and mutual devotion; a happy and triumphant reunion. Judged by every canon of modern realistic art, it was stagey and conventional to the point of being ridiculous; but the acting was brilliant, and even Sir Douglas and Mona found it difficult to escape the enthusiasm of that crowded house. Evelyn and her mother were moved almost to tears before the end. The one saw in the play the ideal that lay in the shadows before her, the other the ideal that her own life had missed. "Have you heard the news about the Sahib?" Lady Munro enquired in the pause that followed the first act. "Yes," said Mona, flushing slightly; "I had a few lines from him by to-day's mail." "Do you think the match a desirable one?" "Ideal, so far as one can foresee. They won't water down each other's enthusiasms, as most married people do." "Douglas remembers Miss Colquhoun as a quaint, old-fashioned child--not at all pretty. I suppose she has improved?" "I suppose she has," Mona answered reflectively: "she is certainly immensely admired now." "It was such an odd coincidence; we heard this morning of the engagement of another of our friends--Colonel Monteith's son; I forget whether you have met him?" "No; I have met the Colonel. Who is the son engaged to?" "Nobody very great. A Miss Nash, a girl with plenty of money. George inherits a nice little estate from his uncle, and he had to marry something to keep it up on. By the way, Lucy Reynolds must have mentioned him to you. She saw a good deal of him at Cannes." And Lady Munro looked somewhat anxiously at her niece. "I rather think she did," Mona answered, pretending to stifle a yawn. "But Lucy met so many people while she was with you----" The rise of the curtain for the second act obviated the necessity of finishing the sentence, and Lady Munro did not resume the subject.