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She was angry because Pen was talking and laughing with Mamma, because Mamma had made a number of blunders in describing the house for a hundred other good reasons. "I should like to have been by to give Lady Clavering my arm if she had need of it," Pen answered, with a bow and a blush. "Quel preux Chevalier!" cried the Sylphide, tossing up her little head.
To make amends for this, the opera shone in ballet, fairy-like performances in which pantomime and trap- doors played as important a part as the actual dancing. Nothing could have been more enchanting than the Diable Boiteux with its many and various tableaux and its dresses, and Fanny Elsler dancing the "cachucha," or the Sylphide or the Revolte du Serail with Taglioni.
The nun, wasted by yearning love, worn out with tears and fasting, prayer and vigils; the woman of nine-and-twenty, who had passed through heavy trials, was loved more passionately than the lighthearted girl, the woman of four-and-twenty, the sylphide, had ever been.
"It is long since I have played," replied Varvara Pavlovna, seating herself without delay at the piano, and running her fingers smartly over the keys. "Do you wish it?" "If you will be so kind." Varvara Pavlovna played a brilliant and difficult etude by Hertz very correctly. She had great power and execution. "Sylphide!" cried Gedeonovsky. "Marvellous!" Marya Dmitrievna chimed in.
He burst in upon her to declare his love, as if it were a question of firing the first shot on a field of battle. Poor novice! He found his ethereal sylphide shrouded in a brown cashmere dressing-gown ingeniously befrilled, lying languidly stretched out upon a sofa in a dimly lighted boudoir.
She's clipping in the Sylphide, ain't she?" and he began very kindly to hum the pretty air which pervades that prettiest of all ballets, now faded into the past with that most beautiful and gracious of all dancers. Will the young folks ever see anything so charming, anything so classic, anything like Taglioni? "Miss Amory is a sylph herself," said Mr. Pen.
But they can't live together: they oughtn't to live together: and I wish, my dear creature, with all my soul, that I could see you with an establishment of your own for there is no woman in London who could conduct one better with your own establishment, making your own home happy." "I am not very happy in this one," said the Sylphide; "and the stupidity of mamma is enough to provoke a saint."
And a short time after this, upon her birthday, which happened in the month of June, Miss Amory received from "a friend" a parcel containing an enormous brass inlaid writing-desk, in which there was a set of amethysts, the most hideous eyes ever looked upon, a musical snuff-box, and two Keepsakes of the year before last, and accompanied with a couple of gown pieces of the most astounding colours, the receipt of which goods made the Sylphide laugh and wonder immoderately.
Grady did not answer: his song was heard from afar off, from the kitchen, his upper room, where Grady was singing at his work. "Grady, my coat!" again roared the voice from within. "Why, that is not Mr. Strong's voice," said the Sylphide, still half laughing. "Grady my coat! Bonner, who is Grady my coat? We ought to go away."
Close its eyes as it may, the public cannot but perceive, that the legitimate drama is banished by want of encouragement from the national theatres, and that the ballet is brandishing her cap and bells triumphantly in its room. Such changes are never the result of accident. The supply is created by the demand. It is because we prefer the Sylphide to Juliet, that the Sylphide figures before us.
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