“We have never been abroad,” said Hyacinth, candidly, looking into his friend’s curious light-coloured eyes, the palest in tint he had ever encountered. “Oh, well, there’s a lot of nonsense talked about that!” Captain Sholto replied; while Hyacinth remained uncertain as to exactly what he referred to, and Millicent decided to volunteer a remark. “They are making a tremendous row on the stage. I should think it would be very bad in those boxes.” There was a banging and thumping behind the curtain, the sound of heavy scenery pushed about. “Oh yes; it’s much better here, every way. I think you have the best seats in the house,” said Captain Sholto. “I should like very much to finish my evening beside you. The trouble is I have ladies—a pair of them,” he went on, as if he were seriously considering this possibility. Then, laying his hand again on Hyacinth’s shoulder, he smiled at him a moment and indulged in a still greater burst of frankness: “My dear fellow, that is just what, as a partial reason, has brought me up here to see you. One of my ladies has a great desire to make your acquaintance!” “To make my acquaintance?” Hyacinth felt himself turning pale; the first impulse he could have, in connection with such an announcement as that—and it lay far down, in the depths of the unspeakable—was a conjecture that it had something to do with his parentage on his father’s side. Captain Sholto’s smooth, bright face, irradiating such unexpected advances, seemed for an instant to swim before him. The Captain went on to say that he had told the lady of the talks they had had, that she was immensely interested in such matters—“You know what I mean, she really is”—and that as a consequence of what he had said she had begged him to come and ask his—a—his young friend (Hyacinth saw in a moment that the Captain had forgotten his name) to descend into her box for a little while. “She has a tremendous desire to talk with some one who looks at the whole business from your standpoint, don’t you see? And in her position she scarcely ever has a chance, she doesn’t come across them—to her great annoyance. So when I spotted you to-night she immediately said that I must introduce you at any cost. I hope you don’t mind, for a quarter of an hour. I ought perhaps to tell you that she is a person who is used to having nothing refused her. ‘Go up and bring him down,’ you know, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. She is really very much in earnest: I don’t mean about wishing to see you—that goes without saying—but about the whole matter that you and I care for. Then I should add—it doesn’t spoil anything—that she is the most charming woman in the world, simply! Honestly, my dear boy, she is perhaps the most remarkable woman in Europe.”