Many people said that Mrs.Rasselyer-Brown's afternoons at home were exactly like the delightful _salons_ of the eighteenth century: and whether the gatherings were or were not _salons_ of the eighteenth century, there is no doubt that Mr.
Rasselyer-Brown, under whose care certain favoured guests dropped quietly into the back alcove of the dining-room, did his best to put the gathering on a par with the best saloons of the twentieth.
Now it so happened that there had come a singularly slack moment in the social life of the City.

The Grand Opera had sung itself into a huge deficit and closed.

There remained nothing of it except the efforts of a committee of ladies to raise enough money to enable Signor Puffi to leave town, and the generous attempt of another committee to gather funds in order to keep Signor Pasti in the City.

Beyond this, opera was dead, though the fact that the deficit was nearly twice as large as it had been the year before showed that public interest in music was increasing.

It was indeed a singularly trying time of the year.