The Lady Evelyn: A Story of To-day

"She was aware instantly that the strangers were speaking of her"

THE LADY EVELYN

A Story of To-day

By

MAX PEMBERTON

Author of "The Hundred Days," "Doctor Xavier," "A Gentleman's
Gentleman," "A Puritan's Wife," Etc.

New York
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
Publishers

Copyright 1906 by Max Pemberton
Entered at Stationers' Hall
All rights reserved

CONTENTS

BOOK I.—THE ESCAPADE.

BOOK II.—THE ENGLISHMAN.

BOOK III.—THE LIGHT.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[ "She was aware instantly that the strangers were speaking of her" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Frontispiece ]

[ "Oh, please let me go; your hands hurt me" ]

[ "As you came in folly, so shall you go——" ]

[ "Evelyn, beloved, I am here as you wish" ]

(Facsimile Page of Manuscript from THE LADY EVELYN)

THE LADY EVELYN

PROLOGUE

THE FACE IN THE RIVER

The porter did not know; the station-master was not sure; but both were agreed that it was a "good step to the 'all"—by which they signified the Derbyshire mansion of the third Earl of Melbourne.

"Might be you'd get a cab, might be you wouldn't," said the porter somewhat loftily—for here was a passenger who had spoken of walking over: "that'll depend on Jacob Price and the beer he's drunk this night. Some nights he can drive a man and some nights he can't. I'm not here to speak for him more than any other."

The station-master, who had been giving the whole weight of his intelligence to a brown paper parcel with no address upon it, here chimed in to ask a question in that patronizing manner peculiar to station-masters.

"Did his lordship expect you, sir?" he asked with some emphasis; as though, had it been the case, he certainly should have been informed of it. The reply found him all civility.

"I should have been here by the train arriving at half-past six," said Gavin Ord, the passenger in question—"it is my fault, certainly. No doubt, they sent to meet me——"

"The brown shay and a pair of 'osses stood in the yard more'n an hour," exclaimed the porter with just reproach. "I'll tell Mr. Jacob. He knows his betters when he sees him, drunk or sober——"

"Thank you," said Gavin quietly, "but I will not put his knowledge to the proof. After all, it's only five miles, you say——"

"And a public-house at Moretown if the dust sticks in your throat. You'll do better walking than up alongside old Jacob at this time of night, sir——"

"Had we known that his lordship expected a guest, we'd have answered for a carriage," added the station-master, still apologetically.

The tall, fair-haired Englishman perplexed him. He hardly knew whether he addressed a Duke or a commoner. The voice and manner suggested the former; the intention to walk spoke of a vulgar habit rather befitting his lordship's curate than the honored guest of Melbourne Hall. Gavin Ord, upon his part, perhaps, delighted in perplexing people. He quite understood the kind of curiosity he had aroused; and, refusing to gratify it, he snatched up a light dressing bag; and leaving directions for his heavier luggage to be forwarded in the morning, he set off briskly upon the high road to Moretown, beyond which, as all the world knows, lies the Manor of Melbourne.

"Going to make a long stay, sir?" had been the amiable station-master's last shot.

"Oh, I may settle down there for a long time," said Ord in reply; and this news was all over the village in an hour.

Strangers upon the road to Melbourne Hall were not so many that one should escape remark.

"If he's for the Lady Evelyn," the blithe porter confessed over his cups at a later hour, "she might go farther and get a worse-looking man. Gave me a shillin', he did, and carried his bag hisself. That's what I call a gentleman, now."

Unconscious of this tribute to his qualities, Gavin Ord was then more than three miles upon his road to Melbourne Hall. A hot day of August had given place to a delicious night, fresh and cool and redolent of sweet perfumes. The moon stood high above the horizon, shining with glorious mellow light upon the gathered sheaves and the grattan where the wheat was garnered. So plain were the hill-tops to be seen that the very flocks could almost be numbered upon them; while the bare walls of limestone, the tors of spar, and the higher mounts were veined as by rifts of jewels, giving back in glittering flashes the moonbeams they had husbanded. The roads themselves were eloquent by night. When a farmer's cart went rumbling by, Gavin could hear the echo of the horse's hoofs and the rolling sound of wheels for quite a long time.

He was a man of redoubtable physique, trained by laborious days at home and abroad to the finer qualities of his endurance; and nothing was more to his liking than this lonely pilgrimage to a splendid house wherein he believed that an advantageous welcome awaited him. A stranger to Lord Melbourne, he never allowed himself to forget that his own talents and achievements had made this visit possible and opened to him the doors of a house which few even of the aristocracy now entered. For Gavin Ord was callen in London the first among the younger school of architects—an artist of prodigious originality and daring, and one with as many sides to his talent as a diamond has facets. Already had Burlington House heaped her honors upon him. The great Church at Kensington would, he believed, stand as his memorial to all time. But for a prodigality and a refusal to consider a mere matter of money, his plans for a new cathedral in the North would certainly have been accepted by the committee. As it was, critics said, "There is the man of to-morrow." He liked to hear them say it, for he had a great conceit in his art if none for himself. Something of the spirit of the old-time builders moved within him. His imagination dwelt in lofty temples, roamed in vast aisles—looked down upon men from a masterpiece of spires. He was but a servant, if only the stone which dominated men's hearts.

And now this famous old recluse, this eccentric unknown Earl of Melbourne, had summoned him to save the stately Melbourne Hall from its only enemy—time. He could not have found a more congenial task upon all the continents.

There can be no journey more pleasant than that which carries us a stage upon the road to our ambitions. Every event of the wayside is then an adventure to us; every inn at which we rest seems to offer us ambrosia. Here was Gavin Ord, at ten o'clock of the night, as good a walker upon the road to Melbourne Hall as any trained athlete out with the lark for a morning breather. Five or ten miles to go, it mattered nothing to him. He had forgotten already the five hours in a stuffy train; his mind was set upon the beauties of the moonlit landscape, the fine wooded slopes of the hills, the twinkling lights in the hollows, the dark towers of the scattered churches—more than all, upon the distant goal and the reception which would await him there.

How earnestly had the old Earl implored him to go to the Manor!

"Here is the finest Tudor house in England," he had written; "you can save it. Make it your home and learn to love it as I do. They tell me that in your leisure you ride and shoot. I will introduce you to the finest fencer in Derbyshire, and you shall tell me what you think of the pheasants. Don't expect to find a house-party. I see few people. I desire to see fewer. My daughter will play tennis with you, and, if you are a golfer, there are lean long women on the hills who talk of nothing else but hazards and whins. These preach sermons in stones. Come and hear them, and my motor shall show you Derbyshire. But, above all, become the servant of the Manor, as every true artist must be."

The letter of a man, Gavin said to himself when he read it. He liked it best because there was no gilt-edge of money upon it. The Earl's prodigious wealth had been the one blot hitherto upon the fair panorama of his desires. "There will be a host of flunkies in red breeches," he had thought, "and every one of them will look the question, 'How much is he good for?'" He knew that the present Master of Melbourne Hall had come to the estate and the title almost by accident late in life, and after an adventurous career which men spoke of openly in clubs, but rarely in private life. A wild man who had been everything from a discredited attaché at Bukharest to an equally unsuccessful miner in Australia—this was the third Earl of Melbourne.

*****

And what of his daughter, the Lady Evelyn?

There were but wild fables spoken about this unknown girl and the secluded life her father compelled her to live at the Manor House. Some said she was the daughter of a Roumanian gypsy whom the Earl had married after his disgrace at Bukharest. Others declared that her dead mother had been an actress who had enjoyed a brief spell of notoriety in Vienna and thence had been driven out by the infatuation of an archduke. None knew the truth, but there were many to suggest what the truth might be. Openly and scandalously, as the world will, idle tongues hinted that the Earl must have some good reason for his eccentric conduct. There were even stories that the Lady Evelyn was unmistakably a gypsy girl herself. "As brown as a walnut chiffonier," said little Backbiter at the Club. The fellow had never been within fifty miles of Melbourne Hall; and if he had met the Earl, he would have gone down on his marrow bones to him.

Gavin Ord recalled some of these stories as he followed the tortuous road and left the solitary village still farther behind him. They did not interest him. He had gone into Derbyshire to see not a woman but a house. Delight that he should be chosen for guardian of such a national treasure as Melbourne Hall went with him upon his way. He must be now, he thought, but a mile from the Manor gates. The road had become narrow and closely bordered by leafy elms. No longer could he see the moonlit heights or the twinkling lights in the valleys. There were no kindly beams to guide his steps. In weird darkness he followed the dusty track and pressed on toward the Manor. The rustling of leaves sounded almost like a human voice in his ears. He liked to think that Nature was still awake and speaking to him.

So it is evident that he possessed that quasi-divine attribute, imagination. His mood of thought responded instantly to any change, atmospheric, or of the light of the heavens. The sunshine could ever build temples of success for him; the twilight rarely failed to bring the question, what is the good of it all, of ambition and the stress and strife of arenas. In the night he would awake to remember that all men must die. In the daytime he would laugh at death and all the vain problems of the hereafter. That Melbourne Hall, approached in this gloom of a summer's night, should provoke no evil thoughts but only those of good omen, seemed a new witness to the pleasure with which he contemplated his stay there. He would accomplish something amid those ancient stones by which men should remember him. The aspiration quickened his step. A turn of the road revealed the lodge-gates, with a lighted window and a pleasant cottage. He entered Lord Melbourne's park and discerned the Hall, dim and stately and starred with lights, across the little river which stood for a moat before its walls.

This, then, was his goal, this superb fabric which the genius of the mediæval age had bequeathed to England and to posterity. No words could rightly have described the emotions which stirred his imagination as he stood to contemplate the jagged line of building and battlement, chapel, tower and stable, which his hand should snatch from the greedy hand of time. The very park, with its soft grasses, and deer in shadow pictures beneath the trees, could conjure up a vision of knights and pages and stately dames and all the witching pageantry of half-forgotten centuries. The great house itself might have been the house of a thousand mysteries, locked in banded coffers, enshrined in ghostly walls—crying aloud none the less to him who would listen to the tongue of their romance. Gavin Ord stood in an ecstasy of homage to worship at the gates of such a temple as this. And, standing so, he heard a woman's cry.

He had walked across the park with slow steps and come to the narrow bridge of five Roman arches which spanned the shallow river—shallow, save for one deep pool over which many a fisherman must have thrown a skilful fly. Standing by the balustrade to contemplate the picture, his delighted eyes traced every tower and pinnacle of Melbourne Hall with an artist's ecstasy—thence looked out over the moonlit park to glades of surpassing beauty and scenes which the centuries had hallowed. How inimitable it all was—the mighty yews about which Elizabeth's courtiers had grouped; the groves which had listened to many a child of Pampinea—the fearsome walls, what tragedies, what comedies, had been played within them! Even a dullard might contemplate the scene with awe. Gavin Ord was no dullard, and the spell it cast upon him was such as he had never known in all his life. So entirely did it claim his mind and will that when he heard a woman's low cry beneath the very bridge he stood upon, he scarcely turned his head or gave the matter a thought.

What had happened; whence came the sound? Being repeated, he could no longer ignore it. In truth, it awed him not a little; for it was not the voice of a woman in danger but of one asking his pity, his help, as it seemed, in a low whispering voice which he now heard more clearly than if a strong man had shouted at him. Taking one quick glance at the river, Gavin declared that the cry could not have come from there. Splashing and leaping over mossy boulders, a child might have waded across the stream, he thought. Then whence did the cry come? Turning about, to the right, to the left, he discovered himself to be still alone. It was the voice of imagination he began to say; and was about to quit the place when he heard it for the third time, and so unmistakably, that he no longer doubted it to be human.

Some one called to him from the river below the bridge.

He climbed upon the old stone parapet and looked down straight to the black silent pool about the arches. So dark was it in the shadows that the keenest eyes might not have perceived a human thing there. Gavin Ord, however, saw the thing as clearly as in daylight—a woman's fair head with great sodden leaves about it and streaming black hair caught up upon the ripples. A shudder of awe indescribable came upon him as he looked. For the woman was dead, he said—had been long dead, and yet her voice spoke to him.

He knew that she was dead, for the water lapped upon her half-closed eyes and the fair head turned slowly as the eddies swirled slowly about it. Every right instinct told him that this was a vision and not a truth of the night. He listened for the voice again; but it was silent now. As it ceased to speak to him, the spell vanished. He ran round quickly to the river bank and clambered over the slippery stones to the pool's edge.

It was black as night and void as the ether.

*****

Gavin Ord was not a nervous man and very far from a superstitious one.

When he had quite assured himself that he had been dreaming, his first act was to return to the path and laugh aloud at the whole venture.

"Melbourne Hall is generous to me," he said; "here are the very ghosts coming out to welcome me."

None the less he tried to remember what he had eaten in the train for dinner and whether his recent nights had been late or early.

"I shall get to bed at ten here," he said to himself, "and put in a good walk before breakfast. I have been doing a good deal and I never was great at night work. Of course, if I told anyone, I should be written down a liar. It's always the case when you hear or see anything the other man has not seen or heard."

He caught up his bag and marched on resolutely up the wide gravelled drive by which you reach the great gate of the Manor. A loud bell answering to his touch awakened splendid echoes in the courtyard of the house and set the dogs barking within. When a footman opened to him, he discovered that Melbourne Hall was a building about a quadrangle and that its main door admitted him no farther than to the great square court of which the chapel and the banqueting hall were the chief ornaments. Above the latter, lights shone brightly in many windows. But the courtyard itself lay in darkness.

"Say that Mr. Ord is here," Gavin instructed the footman, and added: "I am very late, I fear; I was stupid enough to miss the afternoon train."

The footman, shutting the door with a solemn formality, called another to his aid that the dressing case might be safely conveyed to the guest's bedroom.

"'Is lordship was sayin' you wouldn't come, sir. Longish walk by Moretown too. We'd have sent the motor but the 'shuffer' don't like late hours. 'Is lordship is now in the boodore along of the Lady Evelyn. This is Mr. Griggs, the butler, sir——"

Gavin was not particularly interested in the fact; but the butler in question had no intention of being ignored. A fat and pompous man of flat and florid visage, he stood, in majestic pose, at the head of the short flight of stone stairs leading to the boudoir, and his attitude no archbishop could have bettered.

"Mr. Gavin Ord, is it not?" he asked.

Gavin said that it was so.

"We kept dinner back ten minutes, sir—I trust there has not been an accident."

"No accident at all—go and tell the Earl that I am here."

Mr. Griggs looked as though he had been shot.

"James will do that," he retorted loftily—waving his hand as a conductor waves a baton.

The obsequious footman strolled off to do the majestic man's bidding and Gavin meanwhile found himself in the banqueting hall, an old Tudor apartment he had admired in many pictures but now entered for the first time. The banners of three centuries hung in tatters from its oaken ceiling; the musicians' gallery stood as it was when fiddle and harp made music there for the seventh Henry, but Gavin resented the fashion of electric lamps none the less and instantly resolved to change them—in which intention the fat butler interrupted him with the news that the Earl awaited Mr. Ord in the long gallery.

"Her ladyship is there too, sir. Perhaps you will be taking supper afterwards."

"Nothing to-night," replied Ord quickly; "I shall dream enough in the old house without that."

"And I dare say you will, sir. Many's the night I've seen a something, though I couldn't rightly say what it were."

Gavin judged that it might have been a flask of spirits which thus troubled the good man's dreams; but he made no comment as they mounted a broad staircase, and passing through a dainty little room in one of the turrets of the house, entered the superb long gallery which is the very masterpiece of Melbourne Hall. The vast length of this, its glorious ceiling, the carvings in geometric tracery, the embrasured windows, the bays, the ingles—how familiar they seemed to Gavin, and yet how far from the truth of them had the drawings been! Just as a man may enter joyously the house of his dream as a very home of love and welcome, so did Gavin pass into the gallery and feast his eyes upon its treasures. Here, he said, a life's work might be done, indeed; here the ripest genius might fall and be gathered by the lap of time.

There were brass candelabra at intervals upon the walls of the gallery and little electric lamps aglow in the sham candles above them. Far down the immense apartment, Gavin perceived the stalwart figure of a bronze-faced man and by his side a young girl, whose pose was so natural, whose manner was so clearly that of an aristocratic, that he did not hesitate to name her instantly for Lord Melbourne's daughter. Unable at the distance to see much of her face, it took shape for him as he drew nearer; and so he found himself against his will staring at her intently as one who would satisfy himself as to where and when he had seen her before. This interest he could not immediately explain; nor did her father's cordial if somewhat loud-toned greeting recall him from his vain pursuit of identity. He felt instinctively that the Lady Evelyn was no stranger to him, and yet for the life of him he could give no good account of any previous meeting.

"Welcome to Melbourne Hall, Mr. Ord—I had begun to say that you had deserted us."

Gavin stammered some vain tale of lost train and business calls; but he did not tear his eyes away from the Lady Evelyn's face.

"Great God," he said to himself at last, "that was the face I saw in the river!"

BOOK I

THE ESCAPADE

CHAPTER I

A TELEGRAM TO BUKHAREST

Upon a night of May, some twelve months before Gavin Ord had gone down into Derbyshire at the Earl of Melbourne's invitation, Count Odin, a Roumanian celebrity of evil reputation in his own country and none in others, quitted the Savoy Hotel by the Strand entrance and had just called a hansom when a well-dressed girl, whom he was surprised to see afoot, stumbled by accident against him, and nervously, yet very prettily, offered him her apologies.

Gifted with a prodigious amount of quite unmeaning gallantry, the Count bowed low and said in passable English that no harm had been done and that it should be his part to apologize.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "it is all the fault of your narrow pavements. Here is a cab. Since we are no longer strangers permit me to drive you to your destination. The night is too hot for you to walk."

The girl drew back instantly as though covered with confusion, and without vouchsafing a single word of reply to the civil invitation, went on westward as fast as the busy street would permit her to walk. Her only desire appeared to be to escape recognition by those who passed her by. She might have been any age between twenty and twenty-five years; her hair was coal black, and her eyes were of the deepest blue. So much the Count had not failed to observe; but his curiosity was not by any means at an end. Dismissing the cab with a haste so pronounced that a fortune might have hung upon his quest, he set off down the Strand after the unknown; and was soon so near to her that his outstretched hand could have touched her as she walked.

Who was she? Whither was she going; whence she had come. The meeting had been so unlooked for, it appeared to be such a very story of marvels that the man would not, dare not even now, believe in his good fortune. For three years, often by day and night, he had been dreaming of an hour when he would find the daughter of the man who had consigned a father to a living grave and compelled the son to a vagrant life. And here, in a London street, he met her face to face—not by his own desire or cleverness, but by one of those accidents which are the true tragedies of life. Never for a single moment did he doubt that she was the woman he sought. He had come to England, guarding as a precious possession a miniature painting which had been found among his father's effects. The face which he had so often looked upon in that little picture was most certainly the face he had seen for one brief instant in the Strand this night. Eyes, expression, the shape of the characteristic mouth, the tiny ears, the coal-black hair, how familiar they seemed to him. "She is Forrester's daughter," he said, and walked the faster for the thought.

It was an easy task, for the girl had no idea that anyone followed her. Crossing the street by St. Martin's Church, she passed the National Gallery at the same swift walk; and neither looking to the right nor to the left, she made straight for Pall Mall and the Carlton Hotel there. At the first hazard, Count Odin believed that this was her destination, a fact which puzzled him not a little; but she passed the hotel without a glance at its doors and going on up the Haymarket, turned suddenly into one of the little courts there and was instantly lost to his view. In his turn, he recognized the place at a glance, and as though both relieved and enlightened stood a moment upon the pavement to debate the situation.

"So," he said to himself, "my lady is an actress—or would it be a chorus girl? Well, we shall soon find that out."

He strolled up the narrow alley, and coming to a broad double door of wood, saw written above it in big red letters, "STAGE DOOR," and, on a bell below, the words "Carlton Theatre." The comparative quiet of the scene, the few people about, and the darkness of the passage beyond the door told him that a rehearsal was in progress and not an actual performance. When he read the bill of the play, affixed to a dirty board, he learned that on the following Wednesday evening, at eight-thirty precisely, Mr. Charles Izard would present Etta Romney in the new play "Haddon Hall," by Constant Hayter. Not much of a play-goer, though a recognized frequenter of those houses devoted to musical comedy, the Count asked himself if he had ever heard the name of Etta Romney before. He could not remember to have done so—but, while he stood there, the stage door-keeper came out to smoke a pipe in the alley, and to him the Count addressed himself with that disregard of diplomatic approach which is a habit of the dubious adventurer.

"The young lady who just went in—I think she is a friend of mine."

"Ah," said the stage door-keeper, without taking his pipe from his lips.

"If you could tell me her name, I would send in my card."

"No doubt you would," said the stage door-keeper.

Nonplussed, the Count stroked his mustache a little viciously and began to fumble in his trousers' pocket.

"No good," said the stage door-keeper, anticipating the offer, and then bridling up as he recognized the kind of man he had to do with, he exclaimed peremptorily:

"Come, it's time you went home to dinner, ain't it; you look hungry enough."

"I was going to give you five shillings," said the Count.

"You keep 'em for your poor old mother in the workhouse," said the stage door-keeper, and he went within and slammed the doors—a hint that even Count Odin could not mistake.

Far from being disturbed at this honest rebuff, the Count, with an adventurer's ready resource, strolled round to the front of the theatre and consulted the play-bills there on the off-chance that one of them would enlighten him. The box-office was closed at this hour, but framed photographs of the company engaged for the new play, "Haddon Hall," decorated the pillars of the vestibule; while a large picture, full-length and conspicuously displayed, "presented" the heroine, Miss Etta Romney, to such of the curious as should care to take their stand before it. Hardly had the Count glanced at the photograph when he recognized the original of it to be the young girl whom he had just left at the stage-door.

"Forrester's daughter, beyond a doubt," said he.

He waited for no more but called a cab and drove to the telegraph office in Waterloo Place. Thence he sent a long telegram to Bukharest. It was vague in its terms and would have been understood by none but the person who read it.

"Tracked down," it said; "am remaining here."

CHAPTER II

ETTA ROMNEY IS PRESENTED

The new play, "Haddon Hall," had been announced for half-past eight precisely on the evening of Wednesday, the twentieth day of May. It still wanted a few minutes to the hour of eight when that famous American impressario, Mr. Charles Izard, permitted a waiter in the Carlton Hotel to serve him with a coffee and liqueur; while he confided to his invaluable confederate and stage-manager, Mr. Walter Lacombe, the assuring intelligence that he had no doubt either about the play or the company.

"They're ho-mo-gen-e-us," he said, lighting a cigar with comfortable deliberation; "the first act's bully and any play with that Third Act I produce. We must get something written for her to follow in. My side will take "Haddon Hall" and it will take Etta Romney. If it doesn't, I close up."

Mr. Lacombe, the stage-manager, had his own doubts, but he was far too diplomatic to express them.

"When you close up, I sell bananas," said he; "that will be in the Ides of March."

Mr. Charles Izard, who had not enjoyed the distinction of three years' idleness at Cambridge (and so had made a vast fortune), produced those strange concatenations of sounds which served him for laughter before uttering a pious wish.

"It's the 'ides of the critics' I'd like to touch," he exclaimed with real feeling; "you know what they're going to say about this as well as I do——"

"Oh, of course," said Lacombe frankly, "they'll baste it, sure enough. No historical play is likely to please Watley. He'll say that hot blankets are the proper treatment."

"I'd like to wrap him up in 'em and smother him," interjected Mr. Charles Izard, still piously.

"That's so—he's capable de tout. But I fancy he will take her none the less."

"Etta Romney, why yes! I'd like to see the man who wouldn't take her. It's a woman that makes a play nowadays. If you'd more of 'em this side, you wouldn't have so many failures. In America we star the woman first and the play afterwards. Here you star the man and when all the schoolgirls have seen him, your theatre's empty."

"Exactly—this play is the exception. You've certainly cut the writing on the wall. There's no room for whiskers on your ideas."

Mr. Izard drained his coffee cup and admitted loftily that there was not.

"I'd have been a fool not to. Here's a girl comes to me out of the ewigkeit. No name, no story, nothing. Won't tell me who she is or where she has played before. Just says, 'I've read about Constant Hayter's play—I know Derbyshire; I have loved the tradition of that story all my life. Money is nothing to me. Let me play the part Miss Fay Warner has given up. Let me play it at rehearsal, and then say whether you wish me to go on.' You couldn't better it in a fairy book. I see her act a scene, hear her speak twenty lines, and say, 'That's bully.' She doesn't ask a salary—why, sir, the girl's a genius born and bred—and what's more she's a lady from the top of her hat to the soles of her boots. I couldn't wish my own daughter to behave better."

"Something odd about her all the same," Lacombe reflected; "dreadfully afraid of being known. She goes in and out of the theatre like a ghost."

Mr. Charles Izard laughed again.

"Well, don't she play the part of one?" he asked affably. "How would you have her come in and out? Whistling like the overhead? The part's herself—the Lady of Haddon. She was born to it. If that girl hasn't walked as a ghost sometime or other, put me down for twenty pounds to an hospital. And no salary, sir, not a single penny."

"Immense," said Lacombe, but immediately paused as a well-known critic passed through the hall and went out to the theatre almost adjoining the hotel.

"There's Clayaton," he went on quickly, "it's not often he sits out a sword-and-cape drama."

"Then he'll sit out one to-night and be ashamed of himself in the morning. Let's get, my boy, it's just on the half-hour. We must be there."

What precisely would have happened had so great a man not been there, the merely humble individual might hardly dare to say. As events went, Mr. Charles Izard put on a light great-coat with a great deal of splendid ceremony, and giving the many-colored lackey a shilling, strolled pompously into the street with his cigar still alight. Passing His Majesty's, before whose doors the boards "House Full" were conspicuously displayed, the pair walked leisurely on to the front entrance of the Carlton Theatre, and were there gratified by one of those spectacles which London alone can display upon the first night of a new production.

Cabs, carriages, electric broughams, even the motor-cars, arrived in quick succession before the brightly lighted vestibule of one of the prettiest theatres in London. From these emerged women in blazing evening dress, men who had dined, and men capricious and irritable because they had not dined—young girls to whom all plays were a dream of delight, mere boys who already had voted the whole thing "rot." As for the critics, they were chiefly patrons of hansoms; though a few arrived on foot, two and two, each trying to learn what the other would say about a performance which many had witnessed at a dress rehearsal. Short men and tall men, bearded men and bald men, they cared nothing for the success of the play, but everything for the glory of the notices they must write. An historical drama could not fail to give them a fine opening. They lolled back easily in their stalls as men whose literary knives were for the moment sheathed, but would be busy anon.

The theatre was packed to the very ceiling when the curtain rose, and few of the amiable first-nighters were missing from the audience. Famous lawyers, doctors of letters, and doctors of medicine, editors of illustrated papers and editors of papers that were not illustrated, literary ladies and ladies who were not literary, novelists, essayists, poets, that curious quasi-Bohemian crowd which constitutes a London first-night house, stood for most of the arts and many of the sciences of our day; and yet in the main brought a child's heart to the play as Bohemian crowds will. The cynics of eighteen, mostly representing halfpenny evening papers, were among the few who denounced the drama before they had seen it. "'Haddon Hall' on the stage again—why," said they, "there have been twenty Di Vernons in our time and why should this Di Vernon find mercy?" She was already in the coach of failure so far as they were concerned. The curtain rose upon their mutterings and did not still them.

It was a pretty scene, the park of famous Haddon Hall and the meeting between pretty Dorothy Vernon and her young lover beneath the sheltering yews. The unknown débutante, Etta Romney, received a lukewarm welcome from the audience; but all admitted the grace of her attitudes, the charm of her voice, and the earnestness she brought to her assistance. A little amateurish in the earlier moments of the play she warmed to her work anon; and a love scene which would have been ridiculous had it been ill-played, she lifted by natural talent to a pinnacle at least of toleration. So the curtain fell to some applause; and the great impressario, Mr. Charles Izard, again ventured the opinion that she was "bully," though his voice had not that confident ring it possessed at the dinner-table. Could the girl make a failure of it, after all? It was just possible. And undoubtedly the play was not a masterpiece.

So the Second Act passed and found him not a little anxious, and he sat far back in his box when the curtain rose upon the Third and concentrated his whole attention upon the performance. The scene was that of the Long Gallery at Haddon; the episode, a midnight meeting between Dorothy and her lover. Dressed in spotless white with the softest black hair tumbling about her almost to her knees, young and supple limbs moving elegantly, a face that Reynolds might have loved to paint, a voice that was music to hear—nevertheless all these physical attributes were speedily forgotten in the sincerity of Etta Romney's acting and the human feeling which animated it. Here was one who loved every stone of this ancient house which the quivering canvas attempted to portray; who had wandered abroad often in its stately park, who spoke the tongue of three centuries ago more naturally than her own, who had been so moved by this story of Di Vernon's life that she gave her very soul to its re-telling. From amazement the audiences passed quickly to a kind of entrancement which only genius can command. It did not applaud; its silence was astounding—not a whisper, scarce the rustle of a dress could be heard. The spell growing, it followed the white figure from scene to scene; was unconscious, perhaps, that any other than she trod the stage; devoured her with amazed eyes; heard, for the first time, each a tale of mediæval England as neither historian nor romancer had ever told. When the curtain fell, the people still sat in silence a little while; but the applause came at length, upon a tempest of wild excitement rarely known in a modern theatre.

Who was she? Whence had she come?

A hundred ready tongues asked the question which none appeared able to answer.

There was but one man in the house who made sure of Etta Romney's identity, and he was a Roumanian.

Count Odin had witnessed the girl's début from a box on the second tier.

"She is a great actress," he said to his companion, Felix Horowitz, a young attaché from the Hungarian Embassy; "I am going to make love to her."

The young man looked up quickly.

"I promise you failure," he said—"a woman who can speak of England like that will marry none but an Englishman."

CHAPTER III

SUCCESS AND AFTERWARDS

Etta Romney sat in her little dressing-room when the play was over, so very tired after all she had done that even the congratulations of Mr. Charles Izard failed to give her pleasure.

Unlike the successful actress of our time, she had not yet attracted the attention of the "flower" brigade, as little Dulcie Holmes, one of her friends in the theatre, would call them; and despite her success and the astonishment it had provoked, no baskets of roses decorated her dressing-table, nor were expensive bouquets thrown "negligently" to the various corners of the room. Two red roses in a cheap vase; a bunch of narcissi, which had obviously come from the flower-girls of the Criterion, witnessed her triumph in lonely majesty. Even the redoubtable Mr. Izard, not anticipating the splendor of the evening, had forgotten to "command" a basket for his star. He, good man, had but one word for his surprising fortune. "It's bully," he said—and repeated the conviction usque ad nauseam.

Etta sat alone, but it was not for many minutes after the curtain fell. Little Dulcie Holmes, the artist's daughter, who had a "walking part" at twenty-four shillings a week, came leaping into the room presently and catching her friend in both arms kissed her rapturously.

"Oh, Etta," she cried ardently, "oh, my dear—they won't go away even now. Can't you hear them calling for you?"

"They are too kind to me," was the quiet response, "and all because I love Derbyshire. Isn't it absurd?—but, of course, I'm very pleased, Dulcie."

"Think of it, dear Etta. Your very first night and Mr. Izard in such a state that he'd give you a hundred a week if you asked him. Of course, you won't play for nothing now, Etta."

"I've never thought of it," said Etta still without apparent emotion ... and then with a very sweet smile, she asked, "What would you say if I told you that I was about to give up the theatre altogether, Dulcie?"

Dulcie opened her eyes so wide (and they were pretty blue eyes too) that the rest of her piquant face was quite dwarfed by them.

"Give up the theatre. You're joking. Here Lucy—here's Etta talking of giving up the theatre. Now, what do you say to that?"

Lucy Grey, a pretty brunette, whose share in the triumph was the saucy delivery of the momentous line, "Oh, Captain, how could you?" (she playing a maid's part for thirty shillings a week), would not believe that Dulcie could possibly be serious.

"Whatever will the papers say to-morrow?" she exclaimed. "Did you ever think she could do it? I didn't, and I'm not going to say that I did. Why, here's Mr. Izard quite beside himself."

"And he'll be beside Etta just now wanting her to sign a three years' engagement as principal. Now, you take my advice and don't you do it, dear—not unless he'll pay you a hundred a week. That's where girls ruin their prospects, taking on things just when they're excited. If it were me, wouldn't I ask him something! Perhaps he'll play hot and cold—they sometimes do; but your fortune's made, Etta, and I can't think why you take it so quietly. How I should dance and sing if I were you——"

Etta had begun to gather up the heavy tresses of her long black hair by this time; but she did so slowly and deliberately as one whom success had neither surprised nor agitated. Could the two young girls about her have read her thoughts they would have been astonished indeed. Not idly had she asked Dulcie Holmes what people would say if she gave up the theatre entirely. For give it up she must. In one short month her father would return from the Continent. She must be at home by that time, and none must ever know that she had left her home.

"We'll talk it all over in the morning," she said, still smiling—"I want both of you to come and see me to-morrow. We shall have read the papers by that time. Whatever will they say about me?"

"It doesn't matter what they say. Everyone in London will be talking about you before the week's out. All the same, the papers are going to be nice. Lucy's cousin was in the vestibule between the acts and he heard the critics talking. They called you 'immense,' dear. That means bad luck for the play, but everything for you. You just wait until the morning comes."

"I fear I'll have to," said Etta, with a sly look toward them; but just then there came a tap on the door and who should it be but a messenger with the intimation that Mr. and Mrs. Charles Izard expected Miss Etta Romney to supper at the Carlton Hotel as soon as she could conveniently join their party. To the extreme astonishment both of Dulcie Holmes and Lucy Grey, Etta appeared to be distressed beyond words by this customary invitation.

"Oh, I never can go; I dare not go—whatever shall I do?" she asked.

"Not go!" cried Dulcie, almost too amazed to speak; "why, of course you must go. Charles would send soldiers to fetch you if you refused. The star always sups with him on a first night. I never heard of such a thing. She talks of not going, Lucy!"

"That's the excitement," said Lucy wisely. "I should be just the same in her place. She wants a glass of wine. She'll break out crying just now if she doesn't get one."

Their solicitude for Etta was very pretty and really honest. They were too fond of her to be jealous. Women who love loyally welcome their friends successes; men rarely do. Dulcie and Lucy might say "what a lucky girl she is;" but they would not have wished her to be less so.

As for Etta herself, the invitation perplexed her to distraction. How if she met some one who knew her at the Carlton. It was very unlikely she thought. Fifteen years passed in a French convent with few English pupils do not admit of many embarrassing acquaintances. The subsequent years, lived chiefly in the park of a mediæval country house rarely open to strangers, were not likely to be more dangerous. Etta knew that discovery might be disastrous to her beyond the ordinary meaning of the term; but her cleverness told her that the risk of it was very small. It was then after eleven o'clock. She remembered that they turned the people out of the Carlton Hotel at half-past twelve.

"Tell Mr. Izard that I will come," she said to the messenger, and then to the girls, "You won't forget to-morrow. Run round early and we'll read the newspapers together. And, dear girls, we'll spend Sunday at Henley, as I promised you."

They kissed her affectionately, promising not to forget. There was not so much pleasure in their lives that they should pass it by when a good fairy approached them. Sharing rooms together, they had as yet discovered upon some fifty-odd shillings a week little of the glamour and none of the rewards of theatrical life. For them the theatre was the house of darkening hope, wherein success passed by them every hour crying, "Look at me—how beautiful I am; but not for you." They had believed that the pilgrim's way would be strewn with gold—they discovered it to be paved with promises.

"Of course, we shall come," said Lucy in her matter of fact way; "whatever should we be thinking of if we didn't."

But Dulcie said:

"I'm going to wear my pink blouse on Sunday and the hat you gave me—didn't I tell you that Harry Lauder would be at Henley? Well, then, he will ... and, Etta, could you, would you, mind if I——"

Etta laughingly told her that she could not, would not positively mind at all; and then remembering how late it was, she hurried from the theatre and found herself, just as the clocks were striking the quarter-past eleven, in the hall of the Carlton, standing before Mr. Charles Izard and listening but scarcely hearing the shrewd compliments which that astute gentleman deigned to shower upon them.

"You've struck it thick, my dear," he was saying. "Get twelve months' experience in my company and you'll make a great actress. I say what I mean. All you want is just what my theatre will teach you—the little tricks of our trade which go right there, though the public doesn't know much of them. Come and have supper now, and we'll talk business in the morning. I shouldn't wonder if the critics spread themselves over this. Don't pay too much attention to them—they dare not quarrel with me."

Mrs. Charles Izard, a frank florid woman, was much less discreet and much more honest.

"Perfectly adorable, my child," she said; "it was joy all the time to me. You couldn't have played it better if you'd have been born in a Duke's house. Wherever you got your manners from, I don't know. Now, really, Charles, don't say it wasn't; don't contradict me, Charles. You know that Miss Romney is going to make a fortune for you; and you're rich enough as it is. Why, child, the man's worth five million dollars if he's worth a penny. And it isn't five years since I was making my own clothes."

The supper room unfortunately put an end to these interesting revelations. Etta followed the loquacious Mrs. Izard as closely as she could, being sure that such a gorgeous apparition (for the lady was dressed from head to foot in scarlet)! would divert attention from herself; and, in truth, it did so. A few turned their heads to say, "That's Izard and there's the only woman of his company who fixes her own salary;" but the supper was already in full swing and the people for the most part silent upon their own entertainment or that of their guests. Of the six or seven women who remarked the stately girl in Izard's company, the majority first said, "What a charming gown!" The men rarely noticed her. They had taken their second glasses of champagne by this time and were genially flirting with the women at their own tables. If they said anything, it was just, "What a pretty girl!"

And what were Etta's thoughts as she sat for the first time amid that garish company, typical of one of London's sets, and in some sense of society? Possibly she would have had some difficulty in expressing them. The music excited her, the ceaseless chatter hurt ears long accustomed to silence. In truth, she had tried to depict this scene in her Derbyshire home many times since her father had shut his gates upon the world. But the reality seemed so very different from her dreams; so very artificial, so shallow, so far from splendid. And beneath her disappointment lay the fear that some accident might disclose her identity. How, she asked, if she stood up there and told them all, "My name is not Etta but Evelyn. To-night I am an actress at the Carlton Theatre, but you will know me by and by as an Earl's daughter." Would they not have said that she was a mad woman? Such a confession would have been nothing but the truth, none the less.

She had planned and carried out, most daringly, as wild an escapade as ever had been recorded in the story of that romantic home of hers, to which she must soon return as secretly as she had come. Until this moment her success had been complete. Not a man or woman in all London had turned upon her to say, "You are not Etta Romney but another, the daughter of the one-time Robert Forrester, of whom your cousin's death has made an earl." Living a secluded life in a quiet lodging in Bedford Square, none remarked her presence; none had the curiosity to ask who she was or whence she came. The very daring of her adventure thrilled and delighted her. She would remember it to the end of her life; and when she returned to Derbyshire the stimulus of it would go with her, and permit her to say, "I, too, have known the hour of success, the meaning of applause, the glamour of the world."

These thoughts followed her to the supper room at the Carlton and were accountable for the indifference with which she listened to the praises and the prophecies of that truly great man, Mr. Charles Izard. He, wonderful being, confessed to himself that he could make nothing of the girl and that she was altogether beyond his experience. Her stately manners frightened him. When he called her, "my dear," as all women are called in the theatre, the words would sometimes halt upon his lips and he would hurriedly correct them and say, "Miss," instead. The first guess that he had made at her identity would have it that she was a country parson's daughter, or perhaps a relative of the agent or the steward of a Derbyshire estate. Now, however, he found himself of another opinion altogether, and there came to him the uneasy conviction that some great mystery lay behind his good fortune and would stand eventually between him and his hopes.

Now many of Mr. Charles Izard's friends visited his supper-table from time to time, and of these one or two were languid young men in quest of introductions. These stared at Etta, open-mouthed and rudely; but her host made short work of them and they ambled away, seeking whom they might devour elsewhere, but never with any ardor. Supper was almost done, indeed before anyone of sufficient importance to engage the great Charles Izard's attention made his appearance. At last, however, he hailed a stranger with some enthusiasm, and this at a moment when Etta was actually listening to a piteous narrative of Mrs. Charles' domestic achievements.

"Why, Count, what good fortune tossed you out of the blanket? Come and sit right here. You know my wife, of course?"

Mrs. Izard and Etta turned their heads together to see a somewhat pale youth with dark chestnut hair and wonderfully plaintive eyes—a youth whose dark skin and slightly eccentric dress proclaimed him unmistakably to be a foreigner; but one who was quite at home in any society in which he might find himself. The face was pleasing; the manners those of a man who has travelled far and has yet to learn the meaning of the word embarrassment. To Mr. Izard he extended a well-shaped hand upon which a ruby ring shone a little vulgarly, but to Etta he spoke with something of real cordiality in his tone.

"Why, Miss Romney," he exclaimed, his accent betraying a considerable acquaintance with Western America, "why, Miss Romney, we are no strangers surely?"

Etta colored visibly; but fearing a misconception of her momentary confusion, she said to Mrs. Izard:

"The Count and I ran into each other in the Strand the other day. I fear I was very clumsy."

"So little," said the Count, "that never shall I call a cab in London again without remembering my good fortune."

He drew a chair to Etta's side and sat so near to her that even the great man remarked the circumstance.

"That's how I'd like to see 'em sit down in my comedies," he remarked with real feeling. "The young men I meet can't take a chair, let alone fix themselves straight on it. You come along to me, Count, and I'll pay you a hundred dollars a week to be master of the ceremonies. Our stage manager used to do stunts on a bicycle. He thinks people should do the same on chairs."

Count Odin looked at the speaker a little contemptuously with the look of a man who never forgets his birthright or jests about it. To Etta he said with an evident intention of explaining his position:

"Mr. Izard crossed over with me the last time I have come from America. I remember that he had the difficulty with his chair on that occasion." And then he asked her—"Of course you have been across, Miss Romney; you know America, I will be sure?"

Etta answered him with simple candor, that she had travelled but little.

"I was educated in a convent. You may imagine what our travels were. Once every year we had a picnic on the Seine at Les Andlays. That's where I got my knowledge of the world," she said with a laugh.

"Then your ideas are of the French?" He put it to her with an object she could not divine, though she answered as quickly.

"They are entirely English both in my preferences and my friendships," was her reply, nor could she have told anyone why she put this affront upon him.

"She's going to make friends enough out yonder in the Fall," said Izard, whose quick ear caught the tone of their conversation. "I shall take this company over in September if we play to any money this side. Miss Romney goes with me, and I promise her a good time any way. America's the country for her talent. You've too many played-out actors over here. Most of them think themselves beautiful, and that's why their theatres close up."

He laughed a flattering tribute to his own cleverness, as much as to say—"My theatres never close up." Count Odin on his part smiled a little dryly as though he might yet have something to say to the proposed arrangement.

"Are you looking forward to the journey, Miss Romney?" he asked Etta in a low voice.

"I am not thinking at all about it," she said very truthfully.

"Then perhaps you are looking backward," he suggested, but in such a low tone that even Izard did not hear him.

When Etta turned her startled eyes upon him, he was already addressing some commonplace remark to his hostess, while Mr. Charles Izard amused himself by diligently checking the total of the bill.

"I could keep a steam yacht on what I pay for wine in this hotel," he remarked jovially, addressing himself so directly to the ladies that even his good dame protested.

"My dear Charles," she exclaimed, "you are not suggesting that I have drunk it?"

"Well, I hope some one has," was the affable retort. "Let's go and smoke. It's suffocating in here."

Etta had been greatly alarmed by the Count's remark, though she was very far from believing that it could bear the sinister interpretation which her first alarm had put upon it. This fear of discovery had dogged her steps since she quitted her home to embark upon as wild an adventure as a young girl ever set her hand to; but if discovery came, she reflected, it would not be at the bidding of a foreigner whom she had seen for the first time in her life but a few days ago. Such wisdom permitted her quickly to recover her composure, and she pleaded the lateness of the hour and her own fatigue as the best of reasons for leaving the hotel.

"I am glad you were pleased," she said to Izard, holding out her hand directly they entered the hall. "Of course it has all been very dreadful to me and I'm still in a dream about it. The newspapers will tell me the truth to-morrow, I feel sure of it."

He shook her hand and held it while he answered her.

"Don't you go thinking too much about the newspapers," he said, with a splendid sense of his own importance. "When Charles Izard says that a play's got to go, it's going, my dear, though the great William Shakespeare himself got out of his grave to write it down. You've done very well to-night and you'll do better when you know your way about the stage. Go home and sleep on that, and let the critics spread themselves as much as they please."

As before, when she had first come to the hotel, Mrs. Izard defied the warning glances thrown toward her by the man of business and repeated her honest praise of Etta's performance.

"It's years since I heard such enthusiasm in a theatre," she admitted; "why, Charles was quite beside himself. I do believe you made him cry, my dear."

The mere suggestion that the great man could shed tears under any circumstances whatever appealed irresistibly to Count Odin's sense of humor.

"Put that in the advertisement and you shall have all the town at your theatre. An impressario's tears! They should be gathered in cups of jasper and of gold. But I imagine that they will be," he added gayly before wishing Etta a last good-night.

"We shall meet again," he said to her a little way apart. "I am the true believer in the accident of destiny. Let us say au revoir rather than good-night."

*****

Etta looked him straight in the eyes and said, "Good-night."

CHAPTER IV

TWO PERSONALITIES

Etta Romney was very early awake upon the following morning; and not for the first time since she had come to London did her environment so perplex her that some minutes passed before she could recall the circumstances which had brought her to that square room and made her a stranger in a house of strangers.

Leaping up with a young girl's agility, she drew the blind aside and looked out upon deserted Bedford Square, as beautiful in that early light of morning as Bedford Square could ever be.

How still it all was! Not a footfall anywhere. No milk carts yet to rattle by and suggest the busy day. Nothing but a soft sunshine upon the drawn blinds, a lonely patch of grass beneath lonely trees, and great gaunt houses side by side and so close together that each appeared to be elbowing its neighbor for room in which to stand upright.

Etta returned to her bed and crouched upon it like a pretty wild animal, half afraid of the day. A whole troop of fears and hopes rushed upon her excited brain. What had she done? Of what madness had she not been guilty? To-day the newspapers would tell her. If they told her father also—her father whom she believed to be snug in distant Tuscany—what then, and with what consequences to herself! A fearful dread of this came upon her when she thought of it. She hid her eyes from the light and could hear her own heart beating beneath the bed-clothes.

She was not Etta now, but knew herself by another name, the name of Evelyn, which in this mood of repentance became her better, she thought. True, she had been Etta when she appeared before the people last night, the wild mad Etta, given to feverish dreams in her old Derbyshire home and trying to realize them here amid the garish scenes of London's dramatic life. But arrayed in the white garb of momentary penitence, she was Evelyn, the good nun's pupil; the docile gentle Evelyn awaiting the redemption of her father's promise that the gates of the world should not be shut forever upon her youth, but should open some day to the galleries of a young girl's pleasure. It was the Etta in her which made her impatient and unable to await the appointed time; the Etta which broke out in this mad escapade, ever trembling upon the brink of discovery and fearful in its possibilities of reproach and remorse. But the Evelyn reckoned up the consequences and was afraid of them.

She could not sleep again although it was then but six o'clock of the morning, and she lay for more than an hour listening to those growing sounds which are the overture of a London day. Workmen discussing politics, amiably, if in strident tones, went by with heavy tread upon their way to shop or factory. Milk carts appeared with their far from musical accompaniment of doleful cries and rattling cans. An amorous policeman conducted flirtations dexterously with various cooks, and passed thence with sad step. Then came the postman with his cheery rat-tat at nearly every house; the newsboy with the welcome cry of "piper"; the first of the cabs, the market carts, the railway vans, each contributing something to that voice of tumult without which the metropolis would seem to be a dead city.

Etta sat up in her bed once more when she heard the newsboy in the square. The papers! Was it possible that they would tell the public all about last night's performance; that her name would figure in them; that she would be praised or blamed according to the critics' judgment? The thought made her heart beat. She had been warned by that great man, Mr. Charles Izard, not to pay too much attention to what the papers said; but how could she help doing so? A woman is rarely as vain as a man, but in curiosity she far surpasses him. Etta was just dying of curiosity to read what the critics said about her when old Mrs. Wegg, her landlady, appeared with her morning tea; and this good dame she implored to bring up the newspapers at once.

"I can't wait a minute, Mrs. Wegg," she said, for, of course, the old lady knew that she was a "theatrical." "Do please send Emma up at once—it's absolute torture."

The excellent Mrs. Wegg, who had her own ideas of newspaper reading, expressed her sympathy in motherly language:

"Ah, I feel that way myself about the stories in 'Snippets,'" she said. "I assure you, my dear, that when the Duke of Rochester ran away with the hospital nurse, I couldn't sleep in my bed at night for wanting to know what had become of her. I'll send Emma up this minute—the lazy, good-for-nothin', gossipin' girl she is, to be sure. Now, you drink up your tea and don't worrit about it. I've known them that can't act a bit praised up to the sky by the crickets. I'm sure they'll say something nice about you."

She waddled from the room leaving Etta to intolerable moments of suspense. When the newspapers came, a very bundle which she had ordered yesterday, she grabbed them at hazard, and catching up one of the morning halfpenny papers immediately read the disastrous headline, "Poor Play at the Carlton." So it was failure after all, then! Her heart beat wildly; she hardly had the courage to proceed.

POOR PLAY AT THE CARLTON

BUT

A PERSONAL TRIUMPH FOR MISS ROMNEY

———

The Old Story of Haddon Hall Again

———

The Star Which Did Not Fail To Shine

Etta read now without taking her eyes from the paper. The notice would be described by Mr. Izard later in the day as a "streaky one"—layers of praise and layers of blame following one another as a rare tribute to the discretion of the writer, who had been far from sure if the play would be a success or a failure. In sporting language, the gentleman had "hedged" at every line, but his praise of Etta Romney was unstinted.

"Here," he said, "is one of the most natural actresses recently discovered upon the English stage. Miss Romney has sincerity, a charming presence, a feeling for this old world comedy which it is impossible to overpraise. We undertake to say that experience will make of her a great actress. She has flashed upon our horizon as one or two others have done to instantly win the favor of the public and the praise of the critic."

Etta put the paper aside and took up a notice in a very different strain. This was from the stately pages of "The Thunderer." Herein you had a dissertation upon Haddon Hall, the Elizabethan Drama, the Comedie Française, the weather, and the tragedies of Æschylus. The writer thought the play a good specimen of its kind. He, too, admitted that in Miss Etta Romney there was the making of a great actress:

>BR?

"But she is not English," he protested, "we refuse to believe it. An artiste who can recreate the atmosphere of a mediæval age and win a verdict of conviction has not learnt her art in Jermyn Street. We look for the biographer to help us. Has the Porte St. Martin nothing to say to this story? Has Paris no share in it? We await the answer with some expectation. Here is a comedy of which the Third Act should be memorable. But whoever designed the scene in the chapel is capable de tout...."

So to the end did this amiable appreciation applaud the player and tolerate the play for her sake. Etta understood that it must mean much to her; but she was too feverishly impatient to dwell upon it, and she turned to the "Daily Shuffler" wishing that she had eyes to read all the papers at once. The "Daily Shuffler" was very cruel:

"Miss Etta Romney," it said, "is worthy of better things. As a whole, the performance was beneath contempt. At the same time, we are not unprepared to hear that an ignorant public is ready to patronize it."

Had Etta known that the author of this screed was a youth of eighteen, who had asked for two stalls and been allotted but one, she might have been less crestfallen than she was when her fingers discovered this considerable thorn upon her rose-bush. But she knew little of the drama and less than nothing of its criticism; and there were tears in her eyes when she put the papers down.

"How cruel," she said, "how could people write of others like that!" She did not believe that she could have the heart to read more, and might not have done so had not little Dulcie Holmes flung herself into the room at that very moment and positively screamed an expression of her rapture.

"Oh, you dear," she cried, "oh, you splendid Etta! Have you read them! Have you seen them? Now isn't it lovely? Aren't you proud of them, Etta? Aren't you just crying for joy?"

Lucy Grey, who had climbed the stairs in a more stately fashion and was very much out of breath at the top of them, came in upon the climax to tell Dulcie not to carry on so dreadfully and to assure Etta that the notices were very nice. She, however, soon joined a shrill voice to her friend's, and the two, sitting upon the bed, began to read the papers together with such a running babble of comment, interjections, cries, and good-natured expressions of envy, that the neighbors might well have believed the house to be on fire.

"The curtain fell to rapturous—oh, Etta—now, Lucy, do keep quiet—her acting in the Gallery Scene—I say that I began it first—her acting in the Gallery Scene—she has a grace so subtle, a manner so winning—isn't that lovely!—now, Lucy, be quiet—we began to think after the Second Act—oh, bother the Second Act—now, there you go again—she is indeed the embodiment of that picture romance has painted for us and history destroyed—oh, Etta—!" and so on, and so on.

Etta admitted upon this that they had some good excuse for congratulating her. In the theatre she found it quite natural to listen to the girls' pleasant chatter and to put herself upon their level both as to Bohemian habits of life and odd views of the world. Away from the theatre, however, the Evelyn in her would assert itself. Despite her affectionate nature, she found herself not a little repelled by that very freedom of speech and act which seemed to her so delightful a thing upon the stage. She was too kind-hearted to show it, but her distaste would break out at intervals, especially in those quiet morning hours when the freshness of the day reproached the memories of the night with its garish scenes and its jingling melodies. To-day, especially, she would have given much to be alone to think upon it all and try to understand both what she had done and what the consequences might be. But the girls gave her no opportunity even for a moment's leisure.

"You said we'd lunch at the Savoy, Etta——"

"And you'd drive us in the Park afterwards——"

"Aren't you really very rich, Etta? You must be, I'm sure. Do you know I have only got three shillings in the world and that must last me until salaries are paid."

"I've worn this dress seven months," said Lucy, "and look at it. Who'll write nice things about me with my petticoat in rags? Well, I suppose what is to be is to be. I'm going to the Vaudeville in the Autumn and perhaps my ship will come in."

"My dear children," said Etta kindly, "you know that I will always help you when I can, and you must let me help you to-day when I am happy—so happy," she added almost to herself, "that I do not believe it is real even now."

They laughed at her quaint ideas and would have read the notices over again to her but for her emphatic protest.

"No," she said, "we have so much to do; so much to think of. After all, what does it matter while the sun is shining?"

CHAPTER V

THE LETTER

The sunny day, indeed, passed all too quickly. A splendid telegram, fifty words long, from the splendid Mr. Charles Izard set the seal of that great man's approval upon the verdict of the newspapers.

"You have got right there," he wired, "the business follows. See me at four o'clock without fail...."

"That means a long engagement," said the shrewd Dulcie, when she read the telegram.

Lucy, prudent always, thought that Etta should have a gentleman to advise her.

"Don't go to the theatre-lawyers," she said; "they always make love to you. If you had a gentleman friend, it would be nice to speak to him about it. Mr. Izard knows what he's got in his lucky bag. Now, don't you go to signing anything just because he asks you, dear. Many's the poor girl who's engaged herself when half the managers in London wanted her. I should hold my head very high if it were me. That's the only way with such people."

Etta promised to do so, and having taken them to lunch, as she promised, she found herself, at four o'clock of the afternoon, in the elegant office wherein the great Charles Izard did his business. Then she remembered with what awe and trepidation she had entered that sanctum upon her first business visit to London. How different it was to-day, and yet how unreal still! The little man had the morning and evening papers properly displayed upon his immense writing table; and, when Etta came in, he wheeled up a chair for her with all the ceremony with which he was capable.

"Why, now," he said, "what did I tell you? Afraid of the newspapers, eh? Well, there they are, my dear. Don't tell me you haven't read 'em, for I shouldn't believe you."

Etta admitted that she might have glanced at them.

"Every one seems very kind to me," she said. "I wish they had spoken as well of the play; but I suppose they must find fault with something. I know so little about these things, Mr. Izard."

"Then you'll soon learn, my dear. As for what they say about the play, that don't matter two cents while the business keeps up. We'll take $9,000 this week or I know nothing about it. Let the newspapers enjoy themselves while they can. They've been kind enough to you; but you're clever enough to understand the advantages my name gives you. Produce that play at any other house and let any other man bill it and they'd have the notices up in a fortnight. But they'll take just what I give 'em, because I know just what they want and how they want it. That's how we're going to do business together. You can earn good money with me and I can find you the plays. My cards are all on the table; I'll sign a three years' engagement here and now and pay you a hundred dollars a week—that's £20 sterling, English money. If you want to think it over, take your own time. You've a good deal of talent for the stage, and my theatre is going to make you—that's what you've to say to yourself, 'Charles Izard will produce me and his name spells money.' As I say, take your own time to think it over. And don't forget you are the first woman in all my life to whom I have offered a hundred dollars a week on a first engagement."

Etta listened a little timidly to these frank and business-like proposals. Such a situation as this had never occurred to her when she left her home in Derbyshire and set out upon this mad escapade. She had asked for a hearing from a man who made it his boast that he saw and heard every one who cared to approach him. The tone of her letter, the restraint of it, the fact that she had known Haddon Hall all her life, that every bit of that splendid ruin, every tree in the old park, every glade in the gardens were familiar to her, struck a note of assent in the great American's imagination and compelled him to send for her. He believed that at the outset she would serve for a "walking on" part. When he saw her, he asked her to read a scene from "Haddon Hall" and heard her on the stage. Then he said, "Here is a born actress, and not only that but an aristocrat besides." The secrecy which had attended her application whetted his desire to engage her. "I will play for a month for nothing," she had said. Even Charles Izard did not feel disposed to offer her a smaller sum.

And here he was talking of agreements for a term of three years and of £20 a week!

How to answer him Etta did not know.

She was perfectly well aware that her weeks in London must be few. Any day might bring a letter from her father in which he would speak of a return to Derbyshire. The mythical visit to Aunt Anne, which had been her excuse to the servants at home, would be exploded in a moment should her father return. None the less, the situation had its humors. "If only I dare tell Mr. Izard," she had said to herself, knowing well that, she would not tell him unless it were as a last resource.

"You are as kind to me as the critics," she exclaimed upon a pause, which greatly alarmed that shrewd man of business—he had expected her to jump down his throat at the offer. "You are very kind to me, Mr. Izard, and you will not misunderstand me when I hesitate. I have already told you that money is nothing to me. Perhaps I am tired of the stage already; I do not know. I feel quite unable to say anything about it to-day. It is all so new to me. I want to be quite sure that I am a success before I accept any one's money."

Her reply astonished Izard very much, though he tried to conceal his annoyance. Shuffling his papers with a fat hand, upon which a great diamond ring sparkled, he breathed a little heavily and then asked almost under his breath:

"Any one else been round?"

"Do you mean to ask me have I any other offers?"

"That's so."

"As frankly, none—at present."

He looked at her shrewdly.

"Expecting them, I suppose?"

"I have never thought of it," she said, greatly amused at the turn affairs were taking. "Of course, I know that successful people do get offers——"

"But not twice from Charles Izard," he exclaimed very meaningly—then turning round in his chair he looked her straight in the face and said, "Suppose I make it one hundred and fifty dollars?"

"Oh," she rejoined, "it really is not a question of money, Mr. Izard——"

"No," he said savagely, "it's that—Belinger. Been seeing you, hasn't he—talking of what he could do? Well, you know your own business best. That man will be waiting on my doorstep by and by, and he'll have to wait patiently. Think it over when you're tossing us both in the blanket. He's a back number; I'm a dozen editions."

Etta was seriously tempted to smile at this frightened earnestness and at the great man's idea of her shrewdness. She could not forget, however, that he had given her the opportunity she had so greatly longed for to put the dreams of her girlhood to the proof. And for that she would remain lastingly grateful.

"My dear Mr. Izard," she said, "I fear you don't understand me at all. Who Mr. Belinger may be I don't know; but he certainly has not made me any offers. And just as certainly should I refuse them if he did so. You have been generous enough to give me my chance. If I remain on the stage, it will be with you."

Izard opened his dull eyes very wide.

"If you remain upon the stage! Good God, you don't mean to say that you have any doubt of it?"

"I have every doubt."

"Have you read the papers?"

"Oh, but you told me not to pay any attention to them——"

"That's from the front of the house point of view. Don't you know that they say you are as great as Réjane?"

"I cannot possibly believe that."