I might have maintained a mysterious and Byronic gloom;
this would have been sheer bad manners. I might have attributed my lack
of spontaneous gaiety to toothache or stomach-ache; this would have
aroused sisterly and matronly sympathies, and I should have had the
devil's own job to escape from the house unpoisoned by the nostrums that
lurk in the medicine chest of every well-conducted family. Agatha, I
knew, had a peculiarly Borgiaesque equipment. Lastly, there was the
worldly device, which I adopted, of dissimulating the furnace of my
affliction beneath a smiling exterior. Agatha, therefore, found me
an entertaining guest and drove me to the Palace Theatre in high good
humour.
There, however, I could resign my role of entertainer in favour of the
professionals on the stage. I sat back in my corner of the box and gave
myself up to my harassing concerns. Young ladies warbled, comic acrobats
squirted siphons at each other and kicked each other in the stomach,
jugglers threw plates and brass balls with dizzying skill, the famous
dancers gyrated pyrotechnically, the house applauded with delight,
Agatha laughed and chuckled and clapped her hands and I remained silent,
unnoticed and unnoticing in my reflective corner, longing for the
foolery to end.
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