"My dear Mila!—you know perfectly well how I detest that kind of thing. Teresa's songs, drag seats, and eager efforts to imitate the worst kind of women!—go to it, if it amuse you; but, with all gratitude, allow me to decline."
"How disagreeable you are!" said Madame Mila, pettishly. "One must do something with oneself all these long days: if it were Palestrina, I suppose you would go."
Lady Hilda deigned to give no reply. She touched in the gold background of her Saint. Madame Mila looked at her with irritation; no one likes to be despised, and she knew that her cousin did very nearly despise her, and all the ways and means of enjoyment in which her heart delighted.
Lady Hilda, tranquilly painting there, annoyed her inexpressibly. Why should any woman be above the box-seats of drags and all their concomitant attractions?
She took her revenge.
"Do as you like of course, but you always do do that," she said carelessly. "There are two seats vacant. St. Louis and Carlo Maremma were to have gone with us, but they went to Della
