But you will think you are in Heaven.’ And then they all got into the lordly carriage, with the powdered footmen, and went to this earthly paradise, with no thought of any evil awaiting them, or harm which could enter there. There were many opera-glasses directed to the box when Isabel in her simplicity and pretty dignity, half-matron half-child, took her seat in it. Lady Mary was no beauty, and the eyes of the world directed themselves to the fresh, new face with a rustle of curiosity and interrogation. Isabel gave one glance round her in acknowledgment of the fine assembly, and the ladies in their pretty dresses, and then turned her face intent upon the stage. The opera was _Lucia di Lammermoor_. Her companions both watched her with much more interest than they did the scene--Lady Mary with delightful expectation at first, then with a shade of disappointment and surprise: while the minister looked on amused, and yet conscious of the least little shade of anxiety, lest his wife should compromise herself by a total want of susceptibility to the entertainment. Neither of them observed, at first, among the gazers below and around one pair of opera-glasses, which the owner with a sudden start had directed full upon the box at the commencement of the performance, and which remained fixed, held with rigid hands, during the whole of the first act. When the curtain fell, Isabel drew breath and heart, her eyes somewhat strained and dilated with the intense gaze she had been fixing upon the stage. ‘Don’t you feel, then, as if _this_ was all a dream, and _that_ was true?’ said Lady Mary, who was a musical enthusiast. ‘I don’t know,’ said Isabel. ‘I don’t understand; if I could see what they all mean.’ She glanced round her and down at the stalls as she spoke, and there she caught a glimpse of--what was it?--a face, a part of a face staring up at her, almost hidden by the black circles of the glasses, but yet with something in its aspect that seemed familiar to her. ‘Do they always stare like that?’ she said, drawing back with the sense of having received a shock, though she could not tell how. ‘Oh, yes,’ said Lady Mary, hastily. ‘No one minds--don’t think of that. But tell me, don’t you feel it--doesn’t it go to your heart?’ ‘I think, if there was anything in my heart, I would say it, and not sing it,’ said Isabel. ‘I think they are all mad. Is she Lucy Ashton? But Lucy would not have the heart to sing. Oh, how could she sing when she could scarcely speak?’ ‘Oh, don’t you see,’ said Lady Mary, ‘that is just what music is? When you cannot speak, you can burst out in music. You can go to the piano, and say everything that is in your heart--you can sing----’ ‘Yes,’ said Isabel, softly; ‘Auld Robin Gray, or that Irish song the poor girl sang when her heart was breaking; but all that music, full of shakes, and trills, and great bursts like the organ made on purpose--oh, no; not if her heart was breaking!’