Explore "The Dweller on the Threshold" by Robert Hichens on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On the night following the dinner in Hornton Street, Malling went to the / Covent Garden Opera House to hear "La Traviata. " The well-worn work did / not grasp the attention of a man who was genuinely fond of the music of / Richard Strauss, with its almost miraculous intricacies, and who was / willingly captive to Debussy. He looked about the house from his stall, / and very soon caught sight of Lady Mansford, Lady Sophia's sister-in-law, / in a box on the Grand Tier. Malling knew Lady Mansford. He resolved to / pay her a visit, and as soon as the curtain was down, and Tetrazzini had / tripped before it, smiling not unlike a good-natured child, he made his / way upstairs, and asked the attendant to tap at a door on which was / printed, "The Earl of Mansford. " The man did so, and opened the door, / showing a domestic scene highly creditable to the much maligned British / aristocracy -- Lord Mansford seated alone with his wife, in evidently / amicable conversation.
After a few polite words he made Malling sit down beside her, and, saying / he would have a cigarette in the foyer, he left them together.