Less Than Kin

The curtain rolled down, the horns gave forth a final blare, and the whole house rustled with returning self-consciousness. Mrs. Raikes and Miss Lewis had always had orchestra seats for Monday nights. Their well-brushed heads, their high jeweled collars, their little bare backs were as familiar to experienced opera-goers as the figure of the long-suffering doorman. They had the reputation of being musical. What indeed could prove it better than their preference for orchestra seats, when they might so easily have gone whenever they wanted in the boxes of their friends?

As the lights went up, they both turned to the glittering tiers above them. The opera was a favorite and the house was full, though here and there an empty box caught one's eye like a missing tooth. Miss Lewis was sweeping the semicircle like an astronomer in full cry after a comet. She had begun conscientiously at the stage box, and with but few comments she had reached the third or fourth, when her hand was arrested. There were three people in it-an old man in a velvet skull-cap, tall, thin, wrinkled, and strangely somber against the red-and-gold background; a younger man dimly seen in the shadow; and a slim young woman in gray.

(The above summary are excerpted from the book, Less Than Kin by Alice Duer Miller).