cookery, and women, and what not, had sometimes an uneasy consciousness
that his companion was laughing at him, here proposed that they should
have a cigar before walking up to the Piccadilly Theatre; but as it was
now ten minutes to eight, Macleod resolutely refused. He begged to be
considered a country person, anxious to see the piece from the
beginning. And so they put on their light top-coats over their evening
dress and walked up to the theatre.

A distant sound of music, an odor of escaped gas, a perilous descent of
a corkscrew staircase, a drawing aside of heavy curtains, and then a
blaze of yellow light shining within this circular building, on its red
satin and gilt plaster, and on the spacious picture of a blue Italian
lake, with peacocks on the wide stone terraces. The noise at first was
bewildering. The leader of the orchestra was sawing away at his violin
as savagely as if he were calling on his company to rush up and seize a
battery of guns. What was the melody that was being banged about by the
trombones, and blared aloud by the shrill cornets, and sawed across by
the infuriated violins? "When the heart of a man is oppressed with
care." The cure was never insisted on with such an angry vehemence.

Recovering from the first shock of this fierce noise, Macleod began to
look around this strange place, with its magical colors and its
profusion of gilding; but nowhere in the half-empty stalls or behind the
lace curtains of the boxes could he make out the visitor of whom he was
in search. Perhaps she was not coming, then? Had he sacrificed the
evening all for nothing? As regarded the theatre or the piece to be
played, he had not the slightest interest in either. The building was
very pretty, no doubt; but it was only, in effect, a superior sort of
booth; and as for the trivial amusement of watching a number of people
strut across a stage and declaim--or perhaps make fools of themselves to